Comment by RetroTechie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RetroTechie | Hacker News Reader

Impossible to predict future if future depends on unpredictable factors.

I can't shake the feeling that recent developments like LLM's, ChatGPT & co are barking up the wrong tree. Or are missing a key piece of the puzzle. Or that vastly simpler (computationally cheaper) constructs with similar capabilities could be found. That in hindsight (say, 20y from now) we'll say "see, it was really easy!". That missing piece(s) were small but essential. And (perhaps) non-obvious right now.

See https://longbets.org/1/

Ray Kurzweil's argument is well reasoned & very convincing imho. Computing power will get there or already is. And our understanding of the architecture & function of the human brain is a steadily-completing picture. Not to mention brains of smaller creatures. All it takes is time.

Doubtful about timeframe in above bet. And efficiencies of artificial vs. biological brains remains to be seen. But yes, AGI will be achieved. Likely sooner than later.

Look at the power draw of the human brains versus any of the hardware running these models. It’s an order of magnitude difference. Often multiple orders of magnitude.

Part of the reason is a massive focus on GPUs and digital techniques. Some things like math operations are quite fast and accurate to do in a discrete sense when that matters.

The human brain is not discrete though. Nor is it really fully analog.

Specialized hardware beyond GPUs for parallel digital calculations will likely be needed to implement architectures that get actually closer to human levels of intelligence.

Deep down the brain is 100% discrete: Neurons are either firing or not. To me, the brain's biggest mistery is how it goes from this to doing all the analogue stuff, and ends up with our capacity to deal with symbols.

Sorry, but this is untrue; action potentials in neurons have extremely complex interplay with each other, including residual “soft” periods and chemically-induced changes in how they fire. Neurons don’t just “fire” or “not fire”, they adaptively change the strength of their firing constantly, unpredictably and continuously.

Yes, and there's things like feedback / reflection, self-modifying like behaviour, lossy memory, emotional state, tiredness, aging, loads of drugs & hormones to influence the process, etc, etc.

Buuuttt... it's possible that few if any of those things are needed to capture the essence of a brains' functionality.

Maybe it's simply a matter of size. Maybe some configuration tweaks. Perhaps a different architecture.

We simply don't know - yet.

> few if any of those things are needed to capture the essence of a brains' functionality

I'm pretty sure all those things being dismissed are the essence of a brain.

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