TeamSlytherin

I've been excited about AGI for a while, mostly because it wasn't a very competitive field, until now.

Yes, AGI is as much or more cognitive neuroscience and philosophy than computer science right now, but a lot depends on the approach one is taking. It's funny to think you have some kind of working model you can throw research data against to see how it holds up, and then doubt yourself when you spend 3 hours on Twitter arguing over fundamentals with another person that is also convinced of their model. A lot of popular ideas sound crazy (or non-workable), so you just have to accept that whatever idea you are pushing is going to crazy as well.

It's best to think about AGI as... at what point can you drop out of high school and still do well in life (or do you even need high school). It's true that it's not a survival issue, but sadly, it's not a test of "pure knowledge" either. There is a great deal of social structure, even "fluff" that is only relevant for interaction (like getting an 80's reference).

That's just what an ML expert would say ;p Problem solvers, maximizers, and utility functions all go in the waste bin when working on AGI. And the problem peals away into other large "hard problems," like the nature of consciousness. NLP can just follow rules, but language understanding (before even reaching some general, high school level), requires knowledge outside of language itself. That leads to questions about embodiment and phenomenal consciousness, p-zombies, and the like. If it was an easy problem to encapsulate, it would have been "solved" by now.

The announcement today has the potential to cut the number of years estimated (to reach AGI) in half, and I'm sure VC funds are DM'ing him non-stop right now. But we don't know which path Carmack will take, and as you rightly point out, current trends in AI is mostly ML/xNN's with a goal of turning data into profit (heavy focus on products/markets). Even those talking about AGI are fractured into different groups. Oddly, many in ML are talking about future abilities that are mostly defined by AGI research (even if they see AGI as a distraction. From his post, I don't think "product development" is a goal. Not clear what challenges or milestones he will set for himself (just having a better testing suite has become an AGI issue of late, so maybe he will contribute to that first).