Great post! It is so easy to get focused on the bad that we forget to look towards the path towards the good, and I want to see more of this kind of thinking.
One little note about AGI: ”cars have not been able to drive autonomously in big cities ”... I think that autonomous car driving is a very bad metric for AGI because humans are -hyper specialized- at the traits that allow it—any organism with hyperspecialized traits shouldn’t be expected to be easily reached by a ‘general’ intelligence without specialized training!
In order to drive a car, you need to: 1. Understand complex visual information as you are moving through a very complex environment, in wildly varying conditions, and respond almost instantly to changes to keep safe 2. Know the right path to move an object through a complex environment to avoid dangers, infer the intentions of other objects based on their movement, and calculate this incredibly fast 3. Coordinate with other actors on the road in a way that allows harmonious, low-risk movement to meet a common objective
It turns out—these are all hard problems—and ones that Homo sapiens was evolutionary designed to do in order to survive as persistence hunters, working in a group, following prey through forests and savannah, and sharing the proceeds when the gazelle collapsed from exhaustion! Our brain’s circuits are designed for this task and it excels at them, and it does it in a way that we don’t even realize how hard driving is! (You know how you are completely exhausted after a long drive? it’s hard!)
It’s easy to not notice how hard something is when your unconscious is designed to do the hard work effortlessly :)
Great post! It is so easy to get focused on the bad that we forget to look towards the path towards the good, and I want to see more of this kind of thinking.
One little note about AGI:
”cars have not been able to drive autonomously in big cities ”...
I think that autonomous car driving is a very bad metric for AGI because humans are -hyper specialized- at the traits that allow it—any organism with hyperspecialized traits shouldn’t be expected to be easily reached by a ‘general’ intelligence without specialized training!
In order to drive a car, you need to:
1. Understand complex visual information as you are moving through a very complex environment, in wildly varying conditions, and respond almost instantly to changes to keep safe
2. Know the right path to move an object through a complex environment to avoid dangers, infer the intentions of other objects based on their movement, and calculate this incredibly fast
3. Coordinate with other actors on the road in a way that allows harmonious, low-risk movement to meet a common objective
It turns out—these are all hard problems—and ones that Homo sapiens was evolutionary designed to do in order to survive as persistence hunters, working in a group, following prey through forests and savannah, and sharing the proceeds when the gazelle collapsed from exhaustion! Our brain’s circuits are designed for this task and it excels at them, and it does it in a way that we don’t even realize how hard driving is! (You know how you are completely exhausted after a long drive? it’s hard!)
It’s easy to not notice how hard something is when your unconscious is designed to do the hard work effortlessly :)
Best,
Kristopher