Even if we assume that the only thing differentiating humans from other forms of intelligence (including artificial neural networks) is more pattern to learn, then that still requires data sets millions if not billions the size of what we currently have. Plus, we know very little about the types of patterns we would need to train an AI on in order for them to reach the AGI level.

I think it's safe to say that "artificial general intelligence" is just another iteration of the BS Industrial Complex.

Humans aren't general intelligences. We're good at things that make us survive, and that's about it. We're not good at 'general' problems, it takes us decades or hundreds of years of small steps and theories, and we may never find the answer. Most of us can't even grasp the fine nuances of math and physics, even after 12-16 years of education. Look at how hard it is for us to even imagine quantum and relativistic effects, or 5-dimensional geometry.

Consider how long it took us to create germ theory of disease and how many of us died without raising to the challenge of understanding the cause. Look at what we believed about nature just 500 years ago. Humans without the larger system of culture, society, industry, lots of time and resources, can't do much. AI will inherit our tech, culture and scientific advances right from the start.

There is a limit to how intelligent a system can become, and this limit is given by the complexity of the survival problem and the environment. You don't become smarter than the problems you have to deal with require. And environments don't evolve exponentially, so AI won't evolve exponentially fast either. Evolution is a series of sigmoids, not an exponential, and there can never be really exponential processes in nature, there's always an upper limit.

I'd say it would be enough to have AI that can survive by itself and sustain us along with it, instead of AGI.

I guess I would argue that common sense encompasses something outside of pure pattern intuition, which is the ability to synthesize not just solutions to a known problem/question but to figure out what question to ask in the first place, across a variety of situations include some that have never been seen previously.

The overhype part isn’t just the Mechanical Turk later, although that’s part of it. It’s also the assumption that pattern recognition within any given domain can generalize to this meta-ability to essentially level jump outside previously established boundaries or “training data.”

Also some things are definitely preprogrammed and passed on from one generation to the next. There are many examples regarding animals, like small pigeons reacting to the shape of an eagle which they have never seen before.

Now add a decade long learning phase and you get general intelligence? Or is it all just layers and layers of pattern matching, imitation and preprogrammed behavior?

Could be the reason why humans are so bad at adressing some problems like climate change, plastic pollution or poverty. There is no clear pattern we can match, learned through individual sensory input, leading us to a solution.

My own thinking on this has been very much influenced by an early AI researcher-turned-philosopher and HCI practitioner, Terry Winograd. His book Understanding Computers and Cognition has some solid arguments for seeing cognition as a trait evolved as a form of "structural coupling" between a living organism and its environment. Highly recommended for anyone looking for an alternate perspective on AI from someone who was doing it way, way before it was cool.

We humans are really fascinating machines, continuously fed with a huge stream of data which we learn to filter and analyze. It takes time to accumulate the data and refine our pattern matching until we seem to be intelligent. It's hard to draw a line when this happens.

Maybe everything happens so fast and seamlessly that we consider it to be something magic and simply call it intelligence? Or maybe there really is something in there, reading in-between the lines, a soul?

We all know that each of us is looking outside from somewhere within a brain and you are able to influence your actions. But, is it some kind of feedback loop which can be reproduced mechanically or something supernatural?

As long as we don't know this, every attempt to recreate general intelligence may be futile.

I think that basically comes down to greed and ignorance.

> There is no clear pattern we can match [...] leading us to a solution.

Except, as best I know, both the problem and solution were recognised in the 80s but it wasn't in the companies' interests to torpedo their profits at the time.

e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...

Societal problems are a different beast. There are so many feedback loops, strategies and socioeconomic forces, that it's hard to find a clear cut solution even if you know the problem.

Stupid example: If you play Sim City, are you able to handle overpopulation, collapse of transportation and disasters? After a few games you definitely get better, recognize the patterns and handle accordingly.

So why doesn't it work in real life, climate change for example? Maybe the data is just too overwhelming, contradictory or incomplete? Maybe we just don't know any patterns which could help us? Or maybe we humans are simply not intelligent?

Because there's a benevolent dictator (you) who can impose societal solutions without contradictory structures (capitalism, etc.) getting in the way. If you were playing multiplayer Sim City with everyone's goal being "make their city the best", I guarantee that most games will end up with societal disasters being unhandled.

> So why doesn't it work in real life, climate change for example?

Capitalism.

> Maybe the data is just too overwhelming, contradictory or incomplete?

Nope, it's complete, non-contradictory, and perfectly clear. The only problem we have dealing with the climate crisis is that it will cost money and discomfort and, unless it's imposed from above, people generally aren't interested in worsening their lives to help distant others (cf tax rates, zoning laws, racism, ...)