--- On Sun, 9/21/08, Vladimir Nesov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> > I'm not building AGI. (That is a $1 quadrillion
> problem).
> >
> 
> How do you estimate your confidence in this assertion that
> developing
> AGI (singularity capable) requires this insane effort (odds
> of the bet
> you'd take for it)? This is an easily falsifiable
> statement, if a
> small group implements AGI, you'll be proven wrong.

As I explained my estimate earlier, that is the cost of automating the economy, 
which AGI could presumably do (by doing all of our work for us). There is a 
tradeoff between spending more to have AGI sooner or spending less and waiting. 
The optimal point depends on current interest rates, and can be found by 
dividing the world GDP (US $66 trillion in 2006) by this rate.

My estimate is independent of technology. However, one possibility is that AGI 
is unsolved because it requires too much computing power, so it will be solved 
by Moore's Law. (A human brain sized neural network requires 10^15 bits of 
memory and 10^16 OPS). But even if the hardware were free, the cost of software 
and/or training is not dropping exponentially. An organization is most 
efficient when its members specialize, which means each member has to learn to 
do its job. You have to choose between a direct cost in training or an indirect 
cost in additional mistakes. Some of the training knowledge is already on the 
internet but most is still in our heads. Transferring your knowledge to a 
machine will take a long time. The speed of human language is the same for 
input and output.

Another possibility is that we will discover some low cost shortcut to AGI. 
Recursive self improvement is one example, but I showed that this won't work. 
(See http://www.mattmahoney.net/rsi.pdf ). So far no small group (or even a 
large group like Google) has produced AGI, in spite of efforts in this 
direction since the 1950's. In fact, there has been very little theoretical or 
practical progress since 1965. It seems like if there was a simple way to do 
it, we would have figured it out by now.

-- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED]



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