Impediments to Creating Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)

Artificial general intelligence, or superintelligence, is not right around the corner like AI companies want you to believe, and that's because intelligence is really hard. Major AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic (as well as Ilya Sutskever’s new company) have the explicit goal of creating artificial general intelligence (AGI), and claim to be very close to doing so using technology that doesn’t seem capable of getting us there.So let's talk about intelligence, both human and artificial. What is artificial intelligence? What is intelligence? Are we going to be replaced or killed by superintelligence robots? Are we on the precipice of a techno-utopia, or some kind of singularity?These are the questions I explore, to try to offer a layman’s overview of why we’re far away from AGI and superintelligence. Among other things, I highlight the limitations of current AI systems, including their lack of trustworthiness, reliance on bottom-up machine learning, and inability to provide true reasoning and common sense. I also introduce abductive inference, a rarely discussed type of reasoning. Why do smart people want us to think that they’ve solved intelligence when they are smart enough to know they haven’t? Keep that question in mind as we go.YouTube version originally recorded July 1, 2024....Support ChadJames Bridle’s Ways of Being (book)Ezra Klein’s comments on AI & capitalism How LLMs workGary Marcus on the limits of AGIMore on induction and abductionNYTimes deep dive into AI data harvestingSam Altman acknowledging that they’ve reached the limits of LLMsMira Murati saying the same thing last month Google’s embarrassing AI search experience AI Explained’s perspective on AGILLMs Can’t Plan paperPaper on using LLMs to tackle abduction ChatGPT is Bullshit paper Philosophize This on nostalgia and pastiche Please leave a comment with your thoughts, and anything I might have missed or gotten wrong. More about me over hereSupport the showJoin Chad's newsletter to learn about all new offerings, courses, trainings, and retreats. Finally, you can support the podcast here.