[impegh]

I read this same empty “goalposts” lament multiples times a day when reading this website, and though I know what the words mean I’m confused what you all think they mean.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Is this just some performative grousing or do you really think what has been developed to date is “artificial intelligence”?

These comments all conveniently fail to define their author’s goalposts that apparently have been reached or surpassed. What were yours?

[cornel_io]

There was a very recent time when passing some version of the Turing Test would have been a fairly commonly accepted goalpost. Many experts thought that was 20+ years away, and were perfectly comfortable saying that it was their "bar", primarily because they thought generating convincing conversational text was so difficult that you'd basically have to solve All The Problems(TM) first.

Notice how nobody is talking about the Turing Test anymore now that it's either already been passed or is very damn close? We can argue back and forth about whether the real stupidity was the earlier expectation that the Turing Test was a useful threshold for AI, but it's impossible to claim that it wasn't a somewhat common and well-known one, so that goalpost really has been moved in a very dramatic way (or rather, removed altogether and replaced with nothing in particular other than a vague "I'll know it when I see it", in most cases).

[creer]

Exactly so. The posts have been moved safely waayyyy over there at AGI, and at "super-human" or at "critical thinking". And several stages or degrees of AGI have been hierarchized. There is a serious reluctance at accepting how dumb an algorithm can be and still compare with humans.

But it is also true that numerous ground techniques are issue of the field of AI and generally called AI as they come out. It makes for good press. And that too was silly.

[ChatGTP]

On the other hand, we've passed the turing test, what's changed?

[creer]

You mean practically? What did this achieve? What did we gain now that the turing test is passed?

For actually already done: Actually believable chat-bots? Summarizers and question answerers? Generative text and graphics actually usable for generation of text, graphics and (mostly) photo-realistic renderings? Architecture brainstorming? (And logos, etc.) Kinda working self-driving cars? New Go playing strategies? A super-human Go champion? AI is on a roll these days.

That's not counting the more proprietary and discreet applications being already used all over the place. I fully expect there are already several.

[jodrellblank]

For the sake of this, let's agree ChatGPT passed the Turing test. So you're saying "The posts have been moved" - you don't want them moved, you want "AI" to mean "ChatGPT equivalent, which passed a Turing test". Presumably you don't want progress and research to stop there, so what would be achieved by stopping using the term "AI" so that we "aren't moving the goalposts"? Why is "not moving the goalposts" a thing you care about at all? All it would mean is we make up another term like "artificial superintelligence" or "artificial person" or something, and everything else is exactly the same.

It's like arguing that when a child rides a bike with stabilisers that they have "learned to ride a bike" and then complaining anytime someone suggests the child learns to ride without stabilisers, because they "already learned to ride a bike" and now that's moving the goalposts - but you still want them to learn without stabilisers, presumably, you're just complaining about the term used to describe it, for ... apparently no reason or benefit whatsoever?

[creer]

Is this an argument in good faith? This is HN so I'll answer it in good faith and without fighting. I mean:

- Passing the Turing test (for some measure of that) is a huge achievement - Poopoo-ing it is unuseful.

- Moving the bar from chat-bot Turing test to wwwaaayyy over there at super-human intelligence is unuseful. There are lots of valuable steps in between.

- There are many valuable steps before super-human intelligence.

- Most humans are nowhere near super-human intelligence. They are still "intelligent" enough for significant effects on the world as well as day-to-day grind.

- You can get plenty of sci-fi-level results without super-human intelligence

- We have already achieved AGI - Artificial General Intelligence because plenty of humans operate "just fine" in the world with bog-standard intelligence and for the ones limited to a keyboard roughly equivalently to an LLM-based chatbot. Top of the line AGI OR top of the line intelligence is not necessary to massively change the world.

- Incremental and bonus goals are a great thing! You are right!

- Many humans will fight hard to reserve the term intelligence to wet stuff. That's unuseful.

- Just because "it's done" doesn't mean all of a sudden that Turing test was not a good test.

[ChatGTP]

It would be cool if / when we see any of these advancements solve some real world important problems. Realistic chatbots? who cares?

[peyton]

Today’s chatbots definitely don’t pass Turing’s standard imitation game. You have two humans and one machine. One human gets to help the other human trip up the machine. It’s trivial to trip up today’s chatbots.

[resonious]

Back in my CS undergrad we learned Dijkstra's Algorithm in AI class. Once upon a time, that was AI. I think AI just refers to newly discovered useful algorithms.

[quickthrower2]

Well for it to be Artificial and convey Intellgence. I think that goal has been met!

[F-Lexx]

How do you define intelligence?

[quickthrower2]

I don’t have a exact definition but I will claim that helping me to write code that usually works first time or has a minor bug based on natural language is intelligence.