Quentin Hardy of the NYT on Bostrom: His career amounts to: "Assume hummingbirds will speak French. Let's discuss their novels." https://twitter.com/qhardy/status/806003812431319041

> Similarly, we just don't understand minds enough yet to formulate sensible questions about AI.

We most certainly do understand enough to formulate questions, and even answer some of them. The problem is that the people making the most noise (Bostrom et al) are not trained in neuroscience or computer science, nor do they have practical experience in deploying working systems. They have about as much training and expertise as science fiction writers, and the end result is similar.

> The problem is that the people making the most noise (Bostrom et al) are not trained in neuroscience or computer science…

This is incorrect. Among his degrees, Bostrom has a master's in computational neuroscience. His arguments have also convinced PhD neuroscientists (such as Sam Harris) and computer scientists (such as Stuart Russell) about the potential dangers of AI.

Degrees don't matter, publications do.

Particularly when that degree is from a single year program and now 20 years old, in a field that has been revolutionized multiple times in he interim. It's a bit like someone saying they are a web developer because they went through an App Academy like boot camp in 1996, if such a thing existed. King's College is bit more prestigious than that, sure, but content wise it is a fair comparison.

It would be a different story if he published in the meantime, but he did not. Nor did he work on practical projects in industry or anything. He shifted gears to philosophical speculation which he has done since.

Not only are you moving the goalposts, but you are again incorrect. Since 1999, Bostrom has authored four books and published over 30 articles in peer-reviewed journals.

There are good arguments to be made against Bostrom's Superintelligence, but malignments and surface analogies aren't appropriate. Please engage the ideas, not the man.

Published in the field of neuroscience or computer science?

Read what I wrote again please. I think you misinterpreted.

Silly me, I thought it was results!

Not about AGI. We understand enough to formulate questions about narrow "AI," certainly, since that already exists in a narrow sense.

In case you were not aware, we have about a decade of conferences on the specific topic of Artificial General Intelligence. Many of the papers from that conference provide valuable insights into the capabilities and limits of various approaches to solving specific general-intelligence problems. You might find articles from the past conferences interesting:

http://agi-conference.org/

There is also the Advances in Cognitive Systems journal and associated conference, which is AGI even if they prefer to avoid that specific acronym:

http://www.cogsys.org/

And there are always a small but growing number of papers related to AGI in each AAAI conference.

1. Just because something has been published as a paper, does not mean it is applicable, says something interesting (even if theoretical), or even that it's actually correct (it just can't be obviously wrong).

2. Setting aside cogsys (CogSci is a whole different beast than AI/ML in computer science), the only impactful journal/conference you've listed is AAAI.

3. Papers are also typically incremental and all of the AGI papers I've seen in AAAI (and there have been very few) are no different, tackling some small theoretical subproblem.

4. I'm not saying the research is useless. It's very valuable. But it's is pure theory right now, and to claim it has insights for us about what AGI would actually look like is very premature.