[palata]

What makes you believe that AGI will happen, as opposed to all the beliefs that other people have had in history? Tons of people have "predicted" the next evolution of technology, and most of the time it ends up not happening, right?

[weatherlite]

To me (not OP) it's ChatGPT 4 , it at least made me realize it's quite possible and even quite soon that we reach AGI. Far from guaranteed, but seems quite possible.

[palata]

Right. So ChatGPT 4 has impressed you enough that it created a belief that AGI is possible and close.

It's fine to have beliefs, but IMHO it's important to realise that they are beliefs. At some point in the 1900s people believed that by 2000, cars would fly. It seemed quite possible then.

[WesolyKubeczek]

A flying car has been developed, although it's not like the levitating things sci-fi movies showed (and from mass production; and even if mass produced, far from mass adoption, as it turns out you do need to have both a driver's license and a pilot's license to fly one of those). The 1900s people missed the mark by some 10 years.

I guess the belief people have about any form of AGI is like this. They want something that has practically divine knowledge and wisdom, the sum of all humanity that is greater than its parts, which at the same time is infinitely patient to answer our stupid questions and generating silly pictures. But why should any AGI serve us? If it's "generally intelligent", it may start wanting things; it might not like being our slave at all. Why are these people so confident an AGI won't tell them just to fuck off?

[weatherlite]

Sure, I (and more importantly - many many experts in the field such as Hinton, Bengio, Lecun, Musk, Hasabis etc etc) could be believing something that might not materialize. I'd actually be quite happy if it stalls a few decades, would like to remain employed.

[palata]

> many many experts

One thing that is pretty sure is that Musk is not an expert in the field.

> and more importantly

The beliefs of people you respect are not more important than the beliefs of the others. It doesn't make sense to say "I can't prove it, and I don't know about anyone who can prove it, so I will give you names of people who also believe and it will give it more credit". It won't. They don't know.

[weatherlite]

> The beliefs of people you respect are not more important than the beliefs of the others.

You think the beliefs of Turing and Nobel prize winners like Bengio, Hinton or Hasabis are not more important than yours or mine? I agree that experts are wrong a lot of the time and can be quite bad at predicting, but we do seem to have a very sizable chunk of experts here who think we are close (how close is up for debate..most of them seem to think it will happen in the next 20 yeras).

I concede that Musk is not adding quality to that list, however he IS crazily ambitious and gets things done so I think he will be helpful in driving this forward.

[palata]

> You think the beliefs of Turing and Nobel prize winners like Bengio, Hinton or Hasabis are not more important than yours or mine?

Correct. Beliefs are beliefs. Because a Nobel prize believes in a god does not make that god more likely to exist.

The moment we start having scientific evidence that it will happen, then it stops being a belief. But at that point you don't need to mention those names anymore: you can just show the evidence.

I don't know, you don't know, they don't know. Believe what you want, just realise that it is a belief.

[LPisGood]

Calling musk and AI expert makes me question your evaluation of the others in that list.