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0 pointsvoidspark1y ago0 comments

It's not a redefinition, it's a refinement.

Think about it - the original definition of AGI was basically a machine that can do absolutely anything at a human level of intelligence or better.

That kind of technology wouldn't just appear instantly in a step change. There would be incremental progress. How do you describe the intermediate stages?

What about a machine that can do anything better than the 50th percentile of humans? That would be classified as "Competent AGI", but not "Expert AGI" or ASI.

> fancy search engine/auto completer

That's an extreme oversimplification. By the same reasoning, so is a person. They are just auto completing words when they speak. No that's not how deep learning systems work. It's not auto complete..

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JumpCrisscross1y ago

> It's not a redefinition, it's a refinement

It's really not. The Space Shuttle isn't an emerging interstellar spacecraft, it's just a spacecraft. Throwing emerging in front of a qualifier to dilute it is just bullshit.

> By the same reasoning, so is a person. They are just auto completing words when they speak.

We have no evidence of this. There is a common trope across cultures and history of characterising human intelligence in terms of the era's cutting-edge technology. We did it with steam engines [1]. We did it with computers [2]. We're now doing it with large language models.

[1] http://metaphors.iath.virginia.edu/metaphors/24583

[2] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ecology-and-evolution/a...

voidsparkOP1y ago

Technically it is a refinement, as it distinguishes levels of performance.

The General Intelligence part of AGI refers to its ability to solve problems that it was not explicitly trained to solve, across many problem domains. We already have examples of the current systems doing exactly that - zero shot and few shot capabilities.

> We have no evidence of this.

That's my point. Humans are not "autocompleting words" when they speak.

JumpCrisscross1y ago

> Technically it is a refinement, as it distinguishes levels of performance

No, it's bringing something out of scope into the definition. Gluten-free means free of gluten. Gluten-free bagel verus sliced bread is a refinement--both started out under the definition. Glutinous bread, on the other hand, is not gluten free. As a result, "almost gluten free" is bullshit.

> That's my point. Humans are not "autocompleting words" when they speak

Humans are not. LLMs are. It turns out that's incredibly powerful! But it's also limiting in a way that's fundamentally important to the definition of AGI.

LLMs bring us closer to AGI in the way the inventions of writing, computers and the internet probably have. Calling LLMs "emerging AGI" pretends we are on a path to AGI in a way we have zero evidence for.

voidsparkOP1y ago

> Gluten-free means free of gluten.

Bad analogy. That's a binary classification. AGI systems can have degrees of performance and capability.

> Humans are not. LLMs are.

My point is that if you oversimplify LLMs to "word autocompletion" then you can make the same argument for humans. It's such an oversimplification of the transformer / deep learning architecture that it becomes meaningless.

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JumpCrisscross1y ago

> It's not a redefinition, it's a refinement

It's really not. The Space Shuttle isn't an emerging interstellar spacecraft, it's just a spacecraft. Throwing emerging in front of a qualifier to dilute it is just bullshit.

> By the same reasoning, so is a person. They are just auto completing words when they speak.

[1] http://metaphors.iath.virginia.edu/metaphors/24583

[2] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ecology-and-evolution/a...

voidsparkOP1y ago

Technically it is a refinement, as it distinguishes levels of performance.

> We have no evidence of this.

That's my point. Humans are not "autocompleting words" when they speak.

JumpCrisscross1y ago

> Technically it is a refinement, as it distinguishes levels of performance

> That's my point. Humans are not "autocompleting words" when they speak

Humans are not. LLMs are. It turns out that's incredibly powerful! But it's also limiting in a way that's fundamentally important to the definition of AGI.

voidsparkOP1y ago

> Gluten-free means free of gluten.

Bad analogy. That's a binary classification. AGI systems can have degrees of performance and capability.

> Humans are not. LLMs are.

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