[Chronic2h]

Let me help you out by responding as an authority to the parent.

I worked at DeepMind as an AI researcher. I can guarantee you will not see "AGI" or "strong AI" in your or your children's lifetimes. It's fun to believe, it gives us something to look forward to, talk about with friends, and discuss on HN. But in reality, we are so far from artificial general intelligence, even with an exponential curve, it will take us 100 more years. The current deep learning era (or more aptly named, pattern recognition) will last another 5-10 years, at best. Then another winter will come.

[blueyes]

I can assure you that some of your former colleagues disagree with you.

[Eliezer]

What on Earth do you think you know, and how on Earth do you think you know it?

[daveguy]

Most people actually doing AI research are much more conservative about their estimates and expectations of AGI. They understand very clearly how much of current AI "breakthroughs" really just barely nudge the ball forward (market speak aside). Do you use an virtual assistant -- OK Google, Alexa, Siri, etc? Has your experience with those assistants consistently improved or do they regress in annoying ways that make them seem obviously ignorant of basic facts, previously known facts, or common sense?

[vonnik]

Actually, opinions about AGI are quite mixed. People like Ng are more conservative; people like Schmidhuber are more aggressive in their predictions; both are eminent researchers.

RE: Siri and Alexa - Industry deployments of AI are a lagging indicator of what AI can do. AI is moving at two speeds: research and business/consumer applications. The research is moving faster than the apps.

AlphaGo and many other fundamental papers to come out in the last two years have done more than nudge the ball forward. They constitute significant steps, and bundled together they are an even greater achievement.