[bo1024]

I agree with a lot of this, but I think there is a consistent pattern of AI announcements playing on humans' intuitions to create the impression that much more has been achieved than can actually be proven -- in fact, not even trying to prove anything. Part of this is that the researchers are humans too and may be misled themselves. But a rigorous research process would at least try to prevent that.

For example, people once thought playing chess was hard. So they thought that if a computer could beat the world champion, then computers would probably also be able to replace every job and so on. If you sent Deep Blue back in time to the 1960s, they wouldn't understand how it works so they'd probably assume that it since it could beat Petrosian in chess, it could probably drive cars and treat disease.

But then we built Deep Blue and realized that you don't need AGI to play chess; a very specialized algorithm will do it.

So we're like people in the 70s who've been handed Deep Blue. It's irresponsible, in my opinion, to over-hype it when we have no idea how it works.