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Comment by zaptrem | Hacker News Reader

When I saw the scene where one of the hosts was looking at their own language model generating dialogue (though they were visualizing an older n-gram language model) I became a believer in LLMs reaching AGI (note: I didn’t watch the show when it came out in 2016, it was around 2018/19 when we were also seeing the first transformer LLMs and theories about scaling laws).

The scene: https://youtu.be/ZnxJRYit44k

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What about it made you become a believer? Even if a true AGI requires a complex network of specialized neural nets (like Tesla’s hydra network) it would still have a language center like the human brain does. It is non obvious to me that an LLM by itself can become AGI, though I’m familiar with the claims of some that this is plausible.

General intelligence doesn't necessarily mean human like intelligence.

You are right that there are intelligences possible that are not human. Then again, if one is sufficiently intelligent, one could probably convincingly simulate human intelligence. There are chess training programs for example that are specifically trained to play human moves, rather than the best moves.

When prompted, chatgpt answers you as if it is a pirate.

What other general intelligence have we seen other than human? We know, of course, that animals have intelligence, but they do not appear to talk. How are we measuring general intelligence now? By IQ, a human test through words and symbols.

The g-factor of IQ may or may not have anything to do with general intelligence. The general intelligence of AGI is probably a broader category than the g-factor.