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Comment by PopePompus | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why you believe it must experience continuous time. If you had a system which clearly could reason, which could learn new tasks on its own, which didn't hallucinate any more than humans do, but it was only active for the period required for it to complete an assigned task, and was completely dormant otherwise, why would that dormant period disqualify it as AGI? I agree that such a system should probably not be considered conscious, but I think it's an open question whether or not consciousness is required for intelligence.

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Active for a period is still continuous during that period.

As opposed to “active when called”. A function, being called repeatedly over a length of time is reasonably “continuous” imo

I don't see what the difference between "continuous during that period" and "active when called" is. When an AI runs inference, that calculation takes time. It is active during the entire interval during which it is responding to the prompt. It is then inactive until the next prompt. I don't see why a system can't be considered intelligent merely because its activity is intermittent.

The calculation takes time but the inference is from a single snapshot so it is effectively a single transaction of input to output. An intelligent entity is not a transactional machine. It has to a working system.

That system might be as simple as calling the transactional machine ever few seconds. That might pass the threshold. But then your AGI is the broader setup, not just the LLM.

But the transactional machine is certainly not an intelligent entity. Much like a brain in a jar or a cryostasis’d human.

Suppose we could perfectly simulate a human mind in a way that everyone finds compelling. We would still not call that simulated human mind an intelligent entity unless it was “active”.

I think its note worthy that humans actually fail this test... We have to go dormant for 8 hours every day.

Yes, but our brain is still working and processing information at those times as well, isn't it? Even if not in the same way as it does when we're conscious.

What about general anesthesia? I had a major operation during which most of my brain was definitely offline for at least 8 hours.

Anesthesia shouldn't take your brain offline. It just makes you unconscious, paralyzes you, and gives you amnesia. Your brain is still active under general anesthesia. What you were thinking or feeling for those 8 hours was just forgotten.

[citation needed].

You might try https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8054915/ which states: "General anesthesia is characterized by loss of consciousness, amnesia, analgesia, and immobility." and further down shows brain activity recorded while under anesthesia via EEG. The paper looks at the differences and similarities of brain activity while under anesthesia and sleep. This is only possible because, however changed or slowed by it, the brain is still active while under anesthesia

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