[[{“value”:”As many MR readers will know, I don’t think the concept of AGI is especially well-defined. Can the thing dribble a basketball “with smarts”? Probably not. Then its intelligence isn’t general. You might think that kind of intelligence “doesn’t matter,” and maybe I agree, but that is begging the question. It is easier and cleaner
The post Claude 3 Opus and AGI appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.”}]]
As many MR readers will know, I don’t think the concept of AGI is especially well-defined. Can the thing dribble a basketball “with smarts”? Probably not. Then its intelligence isn’t general. You might think that kind of intelligence “doesn’t matter,” and maybe I agree, but that is begging the question. It is easier and cleaner to just push the notion of “general” out of the center of the argument. God aside, if such a being exists, intelligence never is general.
In the structure of current debates, the concept of “AGI” plays a counterproductive role. You might think the world truly changes once we reach such a thing. That means the doomsters will be reluctant to admit AGI has arrived, because imminent doom is not evident. The Gary Marcus-like skeptics also will be reluctant to admit AGI has arrived, because they have been crapping on the capabilities for years. In both cases, the stances on AGI tell you more about the temperaments of the commentators than about any capabilities of the beast itself.
I would say this: there is yet another definition of AGI, a historical one. Five years ago, if people had seen Claude 3 Opus, would they have thought we had AGI? Just as a descriptive matter, I think the answer to that question is yes, and better yet someone on Twitter suggested more or less the same. In that sense we have AGI right now.
Carry on, people! Enjoy your 2019-dated AGI. Canada has to wait.
Concluding remarks: Forget that historical relativism! True AGI never will be built, and that holds for OpenAI as well. Humans in 2019 were unimaginative, super-non-critical morons, impressed by any piddling AI that can explain a joke or understand a non-literal sentence. Licensing can continue and Elon is wrong.
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Philosophy, Uncategorized, Web/Tech
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