We “could presumably build” it, maybe we can do that once we figure out how to get a language prediction model to comprehend what the current date is or how to spell strawberry.

Don’t fool yourself into believing artificial intelligence is not one breakthrough away

All right, same question: Is there more reason to believe that it is one breakthrough away, or to believe that it is not? What evidence do you see to lean one way or the other?

It’s clearly possible, because we exist. Just a matter of time. And as we’ve seen in the past, breakthroughs can produce incredible leaps in capabilities (outside of AI as well). We might not get that breakthrough(s) for a thousand years, but I’m definitely leaning towards it being inevitable.

Interestingly the people doing the actual envelope pushing in this domain, such as Ilya Sutskever, think that there it’s a scaling problem, and neural nets do result in AGIs eventually, but I haven’t heard them substantiate it.

> It’s clearly possible, because we exist.

This is not much different than saying that it’s possible to fly a spacecraft to another galaxy because spacecrafts exist and other galaxies exist.

Possible and practically attainable are two far different things.

> This is not much different than saying that it’s possible to fly a spacecraft to another galaxy because spacecrafts exist and other galaxies exist.

It is very different. We have never seen a spacecraft reach another galaxy so we don't know it is possible.

We have an example of what we call intelligence arising in matter. We don't know what hurdles there are between current AI and an AGI, but we know that AGI is possible.

You didn't answer the question. Zero breakthroughs away, one, or more than one? How strongly do you think whichever you think, and why?

(I'm asking because of your statement, "Don’t fool yourself into believing artificial intelligence is not one breakthrough away", which I'm not sure I understand, but if I am parsing it correctly, I question your basis for saying it.)

There are definitely breakthroughs in the way.

“one breakthrough away” as in some breakthrough away

I can think of a whole host of nearly impossible things that are one breakthrough away.

Let me know when I’ll be able to buy my $30,000 car with level 5 self driving.

Douglas Hofstadter wrote Gödel, Escher, Bach in the late 1970s. He used the short-hand “strange loops”, but dedicates a good bit of time considering this very thing. It’s like the Ship of Theseus, or the famous debate over Star Trek transporters—at what point do we stop being an inanimate clump of chemical compounds, and become “alive”. Further, at what point do our sensory organs transition from the basics of “life”, and form “consciousness”.

I find anyone with confident answers to questions like these immediately suspect.