

Please tell me you don’t actually think “AGI” is possible.


Please tell me you don’t actually think “AGI” is possible.


The term AGI had to be coined because the things they called AI weren’t actually AI. Artificial Intelligence originates from science fiction. It has no strict definition in computer science!
Maybe you learn up a little. Go read Isaac Asimov


I think what people are struggling to articulate is that, the way AI gets thrown around now, it’s basically being used as a replacement for the word “algorithm”.
It’s obfuscating the truth that this is all (relatively) comprehensible mathematics. Even the black box stuff. Just because the programmer doesn’t know each step the end program takes, doesn’t mean they don’t know the principals behind how it was made, or didn’t make deliberate choices to shape the outcome.
There’s some very neat mathematics, yes, and an utterly staggering amount of data and hardware. But at the end of the day its still just an (large) algorithm. Calling it AI is dubious at best, and con-artistry at worst.


Literally, LLMs are extensions of the techniques developed for autocomplete in phones. There’s a direct lineage. Same fundamental mathematics under the hood, but given a humongous scope.


Langton’s ant can procedurally generate things, if you set it up right. Would you call that AI?
As for enemies in gaming, it got called that because game makers wanted to give the appearance of intelligence in enemy encounters. Aspirationally cribbing a word from sci-fi. It could just as accurately have been called “puppet behavior”… more accurately, really.
The point is “AI” is not a useful word. A bunch of different disciplines across computing all use it to describe different things, each trying to cash in on the cultural associations of a term that comes from fiction.
when your nutrition app has a contract with Suntory

Damn, these look kinda fun…


Kessler syndrome […] less than 3 days way
Fuckin’ ace. Actually colonizing space would be a centuries long endeavor of fostering an ecosystem from scratch. So until we start propping up the ecosystem we’re living in, nobody has any business wasting resources on space boondoggles.
Except the Neural Net model doesn’t actually reproduce everything real, living neurons do. A mathematician in the 70s said, “hey what if this is how brains work?” He didn’t actually study brains, he just put forward a model. It’s a useful model. But it’s also an extreme misrepresentation to say it approximates actual neurons.