--- Pei Wang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I believe AGI is basically a theoretical problem, which will be solved
> by a single person or a small group, with little funding.

I think that we are still massively underestimating the cost of AGI, just as
we have been doing for the last 50 years.  The value of AGI is the value of
the human labor it would replace, between $2 and $5 quadrillion over the next
30 years worldwide.  To suggest that it could be solved for a billionth of
this cost is ludicrous.  Google has $169 billion and the motivation, market,
brains, and computing power to solve AGI, but they haven't yet.

I realize there is a tradeoff between having AGI sooner or waiting for the
price of technology to come down.  Simple economics suggest we will be willing
to pay a significant fraction of the value to have it now.

We are chasing a moving target.  It is not enough for a computer to match the
intelligence of a human.  It has to match the intelligence of a human with an
internet connection, and the internet keeps getting smarter as AI is deployed
on it.  You hit the target not at one human brain (which Google has probably
surpassed in computing power and data), but at 10 billion human brains.  You
need a vision system for a billion eyes, a language model to converse with a
billion people at the same time.

Given a good communication infrastructure, general models of intelligence are
at a distinct disadvantage against narrow AI.  You will be competing with
millions or billions of specialized experts that are individually easier to
build, train, optimize, and maintain for one particular task and run on a PC
using mature technology.  Standalone AGI can't do that.  We don't even know
how much computing power is needed to do what one brain does (but I am pretty
sure it is more than 1000 PCs).

I know the argument that you only have to build it once.  I've heard it
before. Each standalone AGI has to be trained for a different task.  This is a
nontrivial expense.  We should not expect it to cost significantly less than
training a new employee.

I think AGI is too big for anyone to own or invest in.  If you want to invest,
look for market opportunities that don't yet exist, the way Google built its
fortune by indexing something that didn't exist 15 years ago.



-- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED]

-------------------------------------------
agi
Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now
RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/
Modify Your Subscription: 
http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=101455710-f059c4
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com

Reply via email to