94746382926 t1_j53aqvj wrote on January 20, 2023 at 2:25 AM

Reply to comment by icedrift in I was wrong about metaculus, (and the AGI predicted date has dropped again, now at may 2027) by blueSGL

Yeah, the amount of ai experts predicting pre 2030 or 2035 is probably only like 10%.

Borrowedshorts t1_j53m7r6 wrote on January 20, 2023 at 3:52 AM

That group also consists of a disproportionate number of researchers who have actually studied AGI broadly.

SurroundSwimming3494 t1_j54661j wrote on January 20, 2023 at 7:05 AM

My guess is that most AI researchers are pretty familiar with AI beyond narrow cases, so I think most of them are qualified to give an answer to "will AGI ever arrive, and if so, when?".

Also, I get the sense that a lot of the AGI crowd knowingly engage in hype to get more publicity, and it makes sense. "AGI soon" is a lot sexier of a discussion to touch on on a podcast (for example) as opposed to "AGI far away".

Borrowedshorts t1_j55qvtl wrote on January 20, 2023 at 4:18 PM

I don't think they are honestly. They may know some of the intracacies and difficulties of their specific problem and then project that it will be that difficult to make progress in other subdomains. Which is probably true, but they also tend to underestimate the efforts other groups are putting in and the progress that can happen in other subdomains, which isn't always linear. So imo, they aren't really qualified to give an accurate prediction because very few have actually even studied the problem. I'd trust the people who have actually studied the problem, these are AGI experts and tend to be much more optimistic than the AI field overall.

AsheyDS t1_j55s0h2 wrote on January 20, 2023 at 4:25 PM

>AGI experts

No such thing yet since AGI doesn't exist. Even when it does, there are still going to be many more paths to AGI in my opinion, so it may be quite a while before anyone can be considered an expert in AGI. Even the term is new and lacks a solid definition.

SurroundSwimming3494 t1_j55sj7z wrote on January 20, 2023 at 4:29 PM

Is studying AGI even a thing, though? AGI does not exist yet and could never do so (potentially), so I'm not sure how one can study something nonexistent. To have theories, sure, but that's another thing.