AGI should show consistency and a few unmistakable discoveries

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 52:12

   you've estimated that we'll have agi by 2030 um so there's interesting questions around that how will we actually know that we got there uh and uh what may be the move quote move 37 of agi My estimate is sort of 50% chance by in the next five years. So, you know, by 2030, let's say. And so I think there's a good chance that that could happen. Part of it is what is your definition of AGI? Of course, people are arguing about that now. And, and mine's quite a high bar and always has been of like, can we match the cognitive functions that the brain has, right?

2. 52:51

   so we know our brains are pretty much general turing machines approximate and of course we created incredible modern civilization with our minds so that also speaks to how general the brain is and um for us to know we have a true agi we would have to like make sure that it has all those capabilities it isn't kind of a jagged intelligence where some things it's really good at like today's systems but other things it's really uh flawed at and and that's what we currently have with today's systems they're not consistent so you'd want that consistency of intelligence across the board and then we have some missing i think capabilities like sort of uh the true invention capabilities and creativity that we were talking about earlier so you'd want to see those how you test that um i think you just test it one way to do it would be kind of

3. 53:38

   brute force test of tens of thousands of cognitive tasks that um you know we know that humans can do uh and maybe also make the system available to a few hundred of the world's top experts uh terence taus of each each subject area and see if they can find you know given give them a month or two and see if they can find an obvious flaw in the system and if they can't then i think you're you're pretty uh you know pretty you can be pretty confident we have a fully general system maybe to push back a little bit it seems like humans are really incredible as the intelligence improves across all domains to take it for granted like you mentioned terence tau uh these brilliant experts they might quickly in a span of weeks take for granted all the incredible things it can do and then focus in well ha ha right there you know i i consider myself uh first of all human

4. 54:33

   yeah uh i identify as human um the i you know some people listen to me talk and they're like that guy is not good at talking the stuttering the you know so like even humans have obvious across domains limits even just outside of mathematics and physics and so on it i i wonder if it will take something like a move 37 so on the positive side versus like a barrage of 10 000 cognitive tasks where it would be one or two where it's like yes holy shit this is special exactly so i think there's the sort of blanket testing to just make sure you've got the consistency but i think there are the sort of lighthouse moments like the move 37 that i would be looking for so one would be inventing a new conjecture or a new hypothesis about physics like einstein did so maybe you could even run the back test of that very rigorously like

5. 55:34

   have a cut off of knowledge cut off of 1900 and then give the system everything that was you know that was written up to 1900 and then and then see if it could come up with special relativity in gen relativity right like einstein did that that would be an interesting test another one would be can it invent a game like go not just come up with move 37 a new strategy but can it invent a game that's as deep as aesthetically beautiful as elegant as go and those are the sorts of things i would be looking out for uh and probably a system being able to do uh several of those things right for it to be very general um not just one domain and so i think that would be the signs at least that I would be looking for, that we've got a system that's AGI level.

6. 56:17

   And then maybe to fill that out, you would also check their consistency, you know, make sure there's no holes in that system either. Yeah, something like a new conjecture or scientific discovery. That would be a cool feeling. Yeah, that would be amazing. So it's not just helping us do that, but actually coming up with something brand new. And you would be in the room for that. So it would be like probably two or three months before announcing it.

7. 56:41

   Mm-hmm. And you would just be sitting there trying not to tweet. Something like that. Exactly. It's like, what is this amazing new physics idea? And then we would probably check it with world experts in that domain, right? And validate it and kind of go through its workings. And I guess it would be explaining its workings too. Yeah, be an amazing moment.