I find the article odd in that it seems to be going on and on about how it’s impossible to predict the date when people will invent AGI, yet the article title is “AGI isn’t close”, which is, umm, a prediction about when people will invent AGI, right?
If the article had said “technological forecasting is extremely hard, therefore we should just say we don’t know when we’ll get AGI, and we should make contingency-plans for AGI arriving tomorrow or in 10 years or in 100 years or 1000 etc.”, I would have been somewhat more sympathetic.
(Although I still think numerical forecasts are a valuable way to communicate beliefs even in fraught domains where we have very little to go on—I strongly recommend the book “Superforecasting”.)
(Relatedly, the title of this post uses the word “close” without defining it, I think. Is 500 years “close”? 50 years? 5 years? If you’re absolutely confident that “AGI isn’t close” as in we won’t have AGI in the next 30 years (or whatever), which part of the article explains why you believe that 30 years (or whatever) is insufficient?)
As written, the article actually strikes me as doing the crazy thing where people sometimes say “we don’t know 100% for sure that we’ll definitely have AGI in the next 30 years, therefore we should act as if we know 100% for sure that we definitely won’t have AGI in the next 30 years”. If that’s not your argument, good.
AGI is possible but putting a date on when we will have an AGI is just fooling ourselves.
So if someone says to you “I’m absolutely sure that there will NOT be AGI before 2035”, you would disagree, and respond that they’re being unreasonable and overconfident, correct?
I find the article odd in that it seems to be going on and on about how it’s impossible to predict the date when people will invent AGI, yet the article title is “AGI isn’t close”, which is, umm, a prediction about when people will invent AGI, right?
If the article had said “technological forecasting is extremely hard, therefore we should just say we don’t know when we’ll get AGI, and we should make contingency-plans for AGI arriving tomorrow or in 10 years or in 100 years or 1000 etc.”, I would have been somewhat more sympathetic.
(Although I still think numerical forecasts are a valuable way to communicate beliefs even in fraught domains where we have very little to go on—I strongly recommend the book “Superforecasting”.)
(Relatedly, the title of this post uses the word “close” without defining it, I think. Is 500 years “close”? 50 years? 5 years? If you’re absolutely confident that “AGI isn’t close” as in we won’t have AGI in the next 30 years (or whatever), which part of the article explains why you believe that 30 years (or whatever) is insufficient?)
As written, the article actually strikes me as doing the crazy thing where people sometimes say “we don’t know 100% for sure that we’ll definitely have AGI in the next 30 years, therefore we should act as if we know 100% for sure that we definitely won’t have AGI in the next 30 years”. If that’s not your argument, good.
Nice catch. Yes the title could use some refining, but it does catch more attention.
The point that I am am trying to make in the essay is, AGI is possible but putting a date on when we will have an AGI is just fooling ourselves.
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
So if someone says to you “I’m absolutely sure that there will NOT be AGI before 2035”, you would disagree, and respond that they’re being unreasonable and overconfident, correct?