[mrd999]

You're the only person who mentioned metaphors here. My intuition tells me metaphors will be key to developing AGI. Metaphors literally generalize; they predict; they organize and catalogue. Formation, testing, and introspection of metaphors seems to be a way forward.

[bildung]

If you are interested in this direction of research: There is a big body of work regarding human cognitive processes and the role of metaphor. I would suggest "Philosophy in the flesh" by Lakoff and Johnson. A hefty work, but that was one of the publications that fundamentally changed my perspective on the human mind. The concept of embodied reasoning was eye-opening for me.

As I have an academic background in learning theory and developmental psychology, I'm pretty pessimistic about the current AI trend, autonomous driving etc. Most smart people in the field are chasing what are effectively more efficient regression functions for over 60 years now, and I almost never stumble upon approaches that have looked at what we know about actual human learning processes, development of the self etc.

Moravec's paradox[1] IMO should have been an inflection point for AI research. This is the level of problems AI research has to tackle if it ever wants to create AGI.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox

[jimsmart]

Related: Martin Hilpert has an excellent lecture/video on metaphor, as part of his Cognitive Linguistics course. Well worth a watch if this is a topic that interests you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0BYLpwSM6E