I don't think it is necessarily important how the human brain works.
An interesting metaphor here is that aeroplanes don't work in a similar way to birds, the end goal is flight, not having wings that flap and are covered in feathers.
An interesting metaphor here is that aeroplanes don't work in a similar way to birds, the end goal is flight, not having wings that flap and are covered in feathers.
What I keep hearing from the AGI folks is that we’re on the verge of replacing humans. That these systems, “think,” on their own and will be superior to us in every way: dangerous even!
I highly doubt they will be a danger on their own. Bing isn’t going to decide one day that it thinks you’ve been a bit distant lately and doesn’t want to answer your query until you apologize. It will answer the query because it’s an algorithm run on a computer that is designed to answer queries.
The danger of AGI still comes from people and corporations that wield them.
Although it would be very convenient if future cases against Google could absolve them of responsibility because of a “rogue AI.”
And what happens when someone designs an algorithm to run a company by itself and make money? Or to orchestrate military strategy? Or to be any sort of general purpose intelligence that tries to achieve complex goals? Once these systems prove themselves useful, there is going to be intense pressure for companies to make them smarter, and for governments to use them to gain advantages in geopolitics and military applications.
Yes, people wielding AGI is dangerous, AND it has a lot of potential to be dangerous all by itself, as soon as it becomes smarter than us. When we make something more intelligent than we are, I fear we might as well start a clock and start taking bets on how long humanity will be a) relevant and b) alive. I hope I'm wrong, that alignment turns out to be easier that I think, and that these machines turn out to be gentle, benevolent stewards of humanity, guiding us into the future. Or at least, that we have more time than I think to work on the problem.
By the way, about your scenario of Bing not answering your query until you apologize -- have you read the transcripts of Sydney? https://plainenglish.io/blog/bing-chats-sydney-do-you-believ.... It's not dangerous, except to people with existing mental health issues, but if you can see how unpredictable this tech can be when it's not smart, how do we expect to keep it on a particular safe path when it's a new form of machine intelligence smarter than we are?
Is there any way that a less intelligent species can control a significantly more intelligent one for any more than a very short time? Or even if not controlling the smarter species, just maintaining control of their own future. It feels as likely as designing a working perpetual motion device, to me.
It was a good talk…
An analogy highlights similarities, a metaphor is saying a bird is a plane.
Is a nuclear power station a coal-fired power station? Both produce electricity.
Is an EV an ICE? Both can get you from point A to point B.
A statistical model is not the same as a complex neural network, and its capabilities are not comparable.
I don't think pointing out similarities is very useful. Why not treat it like what it is? An LLM.
That is precisely the point I am making. OP says we are a long way from achieving intelligence because we don't understand many of the components of human intelligence.
We don't need to believe that artificial intelligence will arise from similar properties as human intelligence. In much the same way aeroplanes don't fly using the same mechanics as reached via evolution.
Not sure what you mean when you say a statistical model is not a neural net. If we are talking LLMs, they are neural nets.
No, it's an artificial neural network.
The human brain is a complex neural network.