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by edanm 2742 days ago
> AI, brain science and cognitive science are extremely difficult fields with small advances, yet people assume that it's possible to 'brute force' AGI by just adding more computing power and doing more of the same.

Do people assume that? I mean, I'm sure some people do, but I don't think I've encountered many people, at least not in the AI safety movement, that actually think it's a matter of more hardware power. Some people think it's possible that that's all that's necessary, but I don't think most will say that that's the most likely path to AGI (rather than, as you say, actual breakthroughs happening).
1 comments
YeGoblynQueenne 2742 days ago
That's pretty much the Singularity conjecture in a nutshell: that exponential advances in computing power will drive an exponential increase in machine intelligence.

It gets more nuanced than that but there are actually very specialised people who argue very forcefully that AGI is a hair's breadth away and we must act now to protect ourselves from it.

Edit: so not "most" people but definitely some very high-profile people. Although granted, they're high-profile exactly because they keep saying those things.

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spot 2742 days ago
nope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity#Algo...

"Carl Shulman and Anders Sandberg suggest that algorithm improvements may be the limiting factor for a singularity because whereas hardware efficiency tends to improve at a steady pace, software innovations are more unpredictable and may be bottlenecked by serial, cumulative research."

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