(playing Devil's Advocate here)
That doesn't even make sense. Correct way forward to what exactly? I guess if you assume that the only valid goal of AI research is to eventually achieve AGI then you might have a sort-of valid point. Except that nobody "knows" that deep learning isn't the way forward to AGI. Nobody "knows" that it is either.
But all of that said, current deep learning research has absolutely created systems that do amazing things and create tremendous value for society. So in what sense can we say that it "isn't the correct way forward"? Do you suggest abandoning DL completely? If so, in favor of what?
(OK "Devil's Advocate" portion over)
My own position has long been that "just deep learning" might be sufficient to achieve AGI if we eventually make networks that are big enough to support the right kind of emergent behavior. But I've also long been skeptical that this is the most direct or efficient path to AGI. I'm an advocate of hybrid symbolic/sub-symbolic systems that integrate deep learning with other AI strategies.
as soon as you say agi, you've lost the plot.
What plot? Would you care to elaborate?
Hard to imagine how that term could matter. It's just short-hand for some "thing" that people care to talk about. I'm not interested in quibbling over definitions or whatever. Nor am I interested in the kind of discussions that get all wrapped in what "general" means and reduce to arguing that even humans don't have "general intelligence", etc. To me, going down those rabbit-holes is really "losing the plot."
It's like when you're in a room where a bunch of people who can't name a medical school are trying to explain to each other what r0 means in a discussion that they believe is about COVID.
It's a red flag.
If AGI is the wrong term to use then either get over it, or explain what term they should use. Particularly when they ask you to explain why the term is wrong.
The idea of a self aware AI is a little difficult for most people to define. Even if the term AGI isn't accurate, don't you think it's important that people be able to discuss the topic? Especially when those people are quite explicitly trying to learn more about it.
Rational is another HPMoR red flag word.
All rational means is "follows a rationale," or a rules system. Astrology, anti-vaxxing, belief in Hermetic magic, and chemtrails, while all ridiculous and incorrect, are also fully rational. So is Dungeons and Dragons, or internalizing Star Trek lore.
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"They're pretty unambiguously asking for information and trying to understand your viewpoint."
And I gave it, clearly and politely.
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"If AGI is the wrong term to use"
No, it's not the wrong term to use. Swap it with a synonym and you have the same problem.
Look. What if I started rambling about fixing aging? Like, straight up immortality. Would you think I was a compelling medical light, or an outsider with dreams that don't make sense given today's realities?
Flying cars? Pocket fusion devices?
"bUt ThEyRe ScIeNtIfIcAlLy PoSsIbLe"
It doesn't matter if I'm "using the wrong term." I could call them aerial vehicles, floating carriages, hover-Datsuns, whatever you want.
The problem is the idea. Anyone who's plying these ideas has completely missed the boat, and doesn't recognize that they're reciting bad science fiction.
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"The idea of a self aware AI is a little difficult for most people to define"
I see you're still missing the boat.
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"don't you think it's important that people be able to discuss the topic?"
It is approximately as important as discussing vampire repellant strategies.
I think there's the much more defensible position that current techniques can't scale up to general artificial intelligence. That's pretty clear because we've already had to change details of model architecture a lot to get the models to where they are now
And a lot of other people listened to the vocal "experts" and assumed that they must know what they're talking about.
Do you have a reference for this? It’s not my experience.
Any pointers to further reading on why deep learning might be a dead end?
Consider a teratoma or lab-grown organ. Is grafting or engineering another attached sensory mechanism going to bring it closer to being an ordinary organism?
I think whether capabilities are super- or sub- human is a red herring.
Even a really primitive organism is still taking all of its computational capabilities and outputting, implicitly, decisions in one context that is its perceived reality.
A collection of computation and perception modules does not do this, without something else.
I don't think developing "something else" is obviously impossible or would require magic. But I'm not sure anyone sane would want to create it when it inherently creates unlimited risk of running amok. This is what the LessWrong people are afraid of, aren't they?
The former would imply that there is no point using deep learning and other similar techniques at all, and is the common implication when people say something is a "dead end".
The latter is what I believe the current generation of machine learning to be: I do not believe it will lead to AGI, and I am skeptical that it can do a great deal more than what it has already done (it can continue to refine the types of things it already does, and I expect it to do so, but I don't think it will open up new categories of things it can do many more times). But despite that, it does do some very cool things now, and as they are refined, I think they can be commercially successful and generally beneficial tools.
There are distinct architectures and our brains have additional architectural features that lizards' lack.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_ganglia