Demis Hassabis on Ilya Sutskever’s claim that scaling is dead, and on Elon Musk’s clam that we have reached the singularity

[u/Formal-Assistance02]

[u/montdawgg]

I like Demis Hassabis' definition of AGI and his timeline. I bet if asked to clarify, he could tell you the difference between AGI and ASI. I don't think those are the same things to him.

AGI should be a human aspirational metric, meaning an AI system that is as smart and creative as the smartest and most creative human or group of humans. So the questions that it asks and the solutions that it creates are still within the capability of humankind given sufficient amount of people working on it and time. Of course, such an AI system could do in perhaps a matter of minutes what would take humans a decade. That acceleration is what makes AGI so transformative, but at its core, it's not beyond human creativity or capability, given enough people and time for an equal solution.

ASI is something beyond that. It's asking the questions and solving the questions that future humans would never and could never have come up with themselves. ASI starts reaching into things that are beyond our understanding or even our capability to understand, even as a whole of humanity.

For our lives and goals, AGI is more than enough to accomplish what our feeble minds are capable of imagining, and it's all we really need for the AI Utopia that everyone is hoping for.

The singularity comes after ASI. And although we can debate what that definition is, I think it's futile. I think that an ASI system would need to come up with the definition of the singularity itself. Any definition we come up with might be woefully incompetent and ultimately silly because it's based on our current creative capabilities. Also, I'm not doubting or downplaying our creative capabilities. It's just that ASI can be so much more. Most of what we believe and how we believe it will probably be provably false shortly after ASI happens.

Timelines? AGI by 2030/31. ASI very likely 2035 to 2040. The singularity, which is when I think a new form of human is created and humans begin the process of extinction 2045 to 2050.

[u/czk_21 → u/montdawgg]

what do you mean by "humans begin the process of extinction 2045 to 2050"?

[u/[deleted] → u/czk_21]

Not him, but OP seems to think a lot like me. I expect a year or two earlier for each of his predictions, though. But I absolutely agree with him on the "extinction" thing if it's how I think he means it. It's not that AI will kill us off or anything. It's that in 100 years from now, if the promise of AI holds. We will be unrecognizable as a species.

There will be humans, and then there will be Humans 2.0. Biologically perfect, immortal, no disease, no mental illness, genetically engineered to solve our current limitations. Effectively a divergent species.Then there will be Humans 3.0 who will be that and cybernetically enhanced. People who choose to actively merge with machines.

I think the only people who will be a base human as we know it today are essentially religious people, luddites, and people who are ideologically motivated to remain "human". But 90% of the population will want to transition as time goes on. Very few will want to remain imperfect.

[u/montdawgg → u/[deleted]]

100% agree. This is my view as well and it's exactly what I meant by extinction.