[charlie-83]

It feels like any time scale on AGI is basically just made up. Since no one has any idea of how to get there, how could you possibly estimate how long it will take? We could stumble on some secret technique that unlocks AGI tomorrow or it could be literally impossible. You might as well ask how long until humans can cast magic spells.

[this_user]

The people most qualified to make an educated guess simultaneously have a direct financial incentive to claim that it is in reach within a few years. The only one who doesn't seem to care all that much is Le Cun.

[ACCount37]

He's under a direct financial incentive to claim otherwise.

If AGI is reachable in 5 years with today's architectures, then why would anyone fund his pet research in novel AI architectures?

[benterix]

To have an alternative? So far the work on transformers was done in a large part in the open (except OpenAI which tried to be as closed as possible). There is zero guarantee that whoever discovers the path to AGI decides to publish the paper etc. It's just one of many reasons (a less important one IMO) why research into novel AI approaches is valuable for humanity.

[Keyframe]

We might start by trying to define what AGI exactly is. It's an elusive goal.

[rstuart4133]

If you have invested in OpenAI because their mission statement says their goal is to reach AGI first, then it's not so hard. It is: an AGI is an AI that can build better AI's faster (in particular refine itself) faster than humans can. The first AI company to achieve that wins, and the rules of the game are winner takes all.

[iknowSFR]

As every consultant will eventually respond as that conversation sputters: it might be easier for us to define what AGI isn’t.

[coffeebeqn]

Once it can extrapolate instead of just interpolate from the training data?

[lagniappe]

When you see these claims it's important to frame the assertion contextually as in the transformer generation, AGI is 10+ years away. This does not, however, account for the next architecture that will do more with less.

[FiberBundle]

This is inconsistent with people like Hassabis or Sutskever giving time frames while also saying that LLMs won't get us to AGI.

[skhameneh]

I'm convinced it'll be in the form of emergence and it won't immediately be known when it's started.

It may very well already be here, but the feedback loops are excruciatingly long and expensive.

[tim333]

It's not quite the same category as magic spells. Kurzweil's prediction has been for 2029 for the last thirty years or so based on Moore's law type stuff. The logic I think is roughly project the hardware improvements, which has worked well, and then add on about five years to sort the software. Time will tell on the second one.

[NaomiLehman]

that post didn't even define AGI, right?