[vacuumcl]

He is saying that the "base code" / DNA which makes up the brain might be only 40MB (for example). Not that what eventually emerges from that (such as our memories and learned abilities) can be captured with just 40MB. It's similar to how the Game of Life can be implemented in just a few lines, but very complex behavior can emerge from that. The key is to find a sufficiently simple but general model from which intelligence equal to our own can emerge given sufficient training.

[seanhunter]

I understand that, but that is an extremely banal observation if you think about it, because the fact that there is this incredible emergent behavior from a simple starting system is the heart of the mystery here.

One of the things that everyone is sort of skipping over is the "sufficient training" part. There is no bootstrap reinforcement learning possible for AGI. You can't alphago this sucker and have it play simulations against itself because the whole idea of generality is that there isn't a simple rule framework in which you could run such a simulation. So training any kind of AGI is a really hard problem.

[anthonypasq]

hes specifically answering the question of why he thinks he has any chance of success doing this independently when there are giant organizations funding this.

[vacuumcl]

There are ways that LLM's can self-improve, such as in this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.11610

I would speculate that there are more ways to train on logical consistency of the output, and improve the models further.

[yifanl]

That seems... just deeply wrong? How much knowledge is gained from observation after birth as opposed to just being innate in your brain?

[sn9]

He's talking about sentience.

He admits that the equivalent of years of "training" would still be needed to take an toddler-level consciousness to something approaching an adult human.