[Elucalidavah]

> it just doesn't seem likely

It is likely conditional on the price of compute dropping the way it has been.

If you can basically simulate a human brain on a $1000 machine, you don't really need to employ any AI researchers.

Of course, there has been some fear that the current models are a year away from FOOMing, but that does seem to be just the hype talking.

[mrandish]

> If you can basically simulate a human brain

Based on the evidence I've seen to date, doing this part at the scale of human intelligence (regardless of cost) is highly unlikely to be possible for at least decades.

(a note to clarify: the goal "simulate a human brain" is substantially harder than other goals usually discussed around AI, like "exceed domain expert human ability on tests measuring problem solving in certain domain(s).)

[threeseed]

If you can simulate a human brain and it required a $100b machine you would still get funding in a weekend.

Because you could easily find ways to print money e.g. curing types of cancers or inventing a better Ozempic.

But the fact is that there is no path to simulating a human brain.

[llamaimperative]

There is no path to it? That's a bold claim. Are brains imbued with special brain-magic that makes them more than, at rock bottom, a bunch of bog-standard chemical and electrical and thermal reactions?

It seems very obviously fundamentally solvable, though I agree it is nowhere in the near future.

[aithrowawaycomm]

This seems like a misreading - there's also no real path to P-NP or to disentangling the true chemical origins of life. OP didn't say it was impossible. The problem is we don't know very much about intelligence in animals generally, and even less about intelligence in humans. In particular, we know far less about intelligence than we do computational complexity or early forms of life.

[CooCooCaCha]

Those seem like silly analogies. There are billions of brains on the planet, humans can grow them inside themselves (pregnancy). Don’t get me wrong, it’s a hard problem, they just seem like different classes of problems.

I could see P=NP being impossible to prove but I find it hard to believe intelligence is impossible to figure out. Heck if you said it’d take us 100 years I would still think that’s a bit much.

[RandomLensman]

We have not even figured out single cell organisms, let alone slightly more complex organisms - why would intelligence be such an easy target?

[CooCooCaCha]

I didn’t say easy.

[aithrowawaycomm]

I think it'll take much longer than 100 years. The "limiting factor" here is cognitive science experiments on smart animals like rats and pigeons, and less smart animals like spiders and lampreys, all of which will help us understand what intelligence truly is. These experiments take time and resources.

[threeseed]

> Don’t get me wrong, it’s a hard problem, they just seem like different classes of problems

Time travel. Teleportation through quantum entanglement. Intergalactic travel through wormholes.

And don't get me wrong they are hard. But just another class of problems. Right ?

[CooCooCaCha]

Yes absolutely. I have a (supposedly) working brain in my head right now. But so far there are no working examples of the things you listed.

[bob1029]

> Are brains imbued with special brain-magic that makes them more than, at rock bottom, a bunch of bog-standard chemical and electrical and thermal reactions?

Some have made this argument (quantum effects, external fields, etc.).

If any of these are proven to be true then we are looking at a completely different roadmap.

[llamaimperative]

Uh yeah, but we have no evidence for any of them (aside from quantum effects, which are "engineerable" to the extent they exist in brains anyway).

[threeseed]

> "engineerable" to the extent they exist in brains anyway

Can you please enlighten us then since you clearly know to what extent quantum effects exist in the brain.

[llamaimperative]

I’m saying to whatever extent they occur, they are just quantum interactions. There’s a path to reproducing them with engineering.

It’s odd to say “reproduce quantum interactions” but remember to the extent they exist in the brain, they also behave as finicky/noisy quantum interactions. They’re not special brain quantum things.