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Comment by iainctduncan | Hacker News Reader

This is exactly my point. The idea that generating music is the sum total of all the cognition that goes on in real time is totally off base. Can we make crappy simulacrums of recorded music? sure.

Can we make a program that could: work the physical instrument, react in milliseconds to other players, create new work off input it's never heard before, react to things in the room, and do a myriad of other things a performer does on stage in real time? Not even remotely close. THAT is what would be required to call it AGI – thinking (ALL the thinking) on par with a highly trained human. Pretending anything else is AGI is nonsense.

Is it impressive? sure. Frighteningly so even. But it's not AGI and the claims that it is are pure huckersterism. They just round the term down to whatever the hell is convenient for the pitch.

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“Pretending anything else is AGI is nonsense”

Is it? I wasn’t aware of “playing a physical instrument on stage with millisecond response times” as a criterion. I’m also confused by the implication that professional composers aren’t using intelligence in their work.

You’re talking about what is sometimes called “superhuman AGI”, human level performance in all things. But AGI includes reaching human levels of performance across a range of cognitive tasks, not ALL cognitive tasks.

If someone claimed they had invented AGI because amongst other things, it could churn out a fresh, original, good composition the day after hearing new input - I think it would be fair to argue that is human level performance in composition.

Defining fresh, good, original is what makes it composition. Not whether it was done in real time; that’s just mechanics.

You can conceivably build something that plays live on stage, responding to other players, creating a “new work”, using super fast detection and probabilistic functions without any intelligence at all.

https://youtu.be/Gs3ocG5yW88

This has aged well and continues to do so.

yes, i absolutely believe we are less than two years from what you describe (aside from physically manipulating an instrument -- but robotics seems to be quickly picking up pace too). what you are imagining is only a difference in speed, not kind. this is the 'god of the gaps' argument, over and over, every time some insurmountable previous benchmark is shattered -- well, it will never be able to do my special thing

> thinking (ALL the thinking) on par with a highly trained human

you are mistaking means for ends. "an automobile must be able to perform dressage on par with a fine thoroughbred!"

We are likely more than 10 year away. The algorithms haven’t been found yet I think.

There is no god of the gaps argument being made. The argument is pretty clear. LLMs are at a local optimum that is quite far from the global optimum of actual general intelligence that humans have achieved.

Some like Penrose even argue that the global optimum of general intelligence and consciousness is a fully physical process, yes, but that involves uncomputable physics and thus permanently out of reach of whatever computers can do.

>but that involves uncomputable physics and thus permanently out of reach of whatever computers can do.

And yet is somehow within reach of a fertilised human egg.

It's time to either invoke mystical dimensions of reality separating us from those barbarian computers, or admit that one day soon they'll be able to do intelligence too.

There's no magical thinking involved in discussing the limits of computability. That is a well researched area that was involved in the invention of digital computers.

Penrose's argument is interesting and I am inclined to agree with it. I might very well be wrong, but I don't think the accusation of magical thinking is warranted.

I'm arguing that, if a fertilised egg is really capable of fundamentally more than computers will ever be, then the only possible explanation is that the egg posseses extraphysical properties not possessed by any computer. (And I'm strongly hinting that this "explanation" should be considered laughable in this day and age.)

> the only possible explanation is that the egg posseses extraphysical properties

This is wrong. Computability is by no means the same as physicality. That's the whole point and you're just ignoring it to make some strawman accusation of ridiculousness.

1. What property of a fertilised egg enables it to compute uncomputable things?

2. If that property is a physical property, what prevents simulation of it?

> 1. What property of a fertilised egg enables it to compute uncomputable things?

The question is malformed. How can something compute an uncomputable thing?

> 2. If that property is a physical property, what prevents simulation of it?

Is P=NP?

>How can something compute an uncomputable thing?

If humans cannot compute uncomputable things either, on what grounds do you claim we are capable of something that computers are incapable of?

Haven't you understood that my argument is precisely that intelligence comprises more than performing computations?

I know you think this is a gotcha moment so I will just sing off on this note. You think physical = computable. I think physical > computable. I understand your argument and disagree with it but you can't seem to understand mine.

It is completely unclear what you think the difference in capability between humans and computers is.

I've tried to follow your reasoning, which AFAICT comes down to a claim that humans possess something connected to incomputability, and computers do not. But now it seems you hold this difference to be irrelevant.

So again: What do you think the difference in capability between humans and computers is?

A fertilized egg doesn’t automatically become able to compute stuff.

Understimulated or feral children don’t automatically become geniuses when given more information.

It takes social engineering and tons of accumulated knowledge over the lifespan of the maturation of these eggs. The social and informational knowledge are then also informed by these individuals (how to work and cooperate with each other, building and discovering knowledge beyond what a single fertilized egg is able to do).

This isn’t simply within reach of a fertilized egg based on its biological properties.

I used to believe this but changed my mind when I learned about that Brazilian orphanage for deaf kids. They were kinda left on their own and in the end developed their own signed language.

That was cool to read about. I don't think we're disagreeing here. Humans (fertilized eggs) have many needs and interactions that give rise to language itself.

Current LLMs seem to be most similar to the linguistic/auditory portion of our cognitive system, and with thinking/reasoning models some bits of the executive function. But my guess is that if we want to see awe-inspiring stuff come out of them, we need stuff like motivation and emotion, which doesn't seem to be the direction we're heading towards.

Unprofitable, full of problems. Maybe 1 in 100,000 might be an awe-inspiring genius, given the right training, environment, and other intelligences (so you might have to train way more than 100K models).

> aside from physically manipulating an instrument

This is the easiest part. Keyboards are only necessary if you have fingers, an AI could very easily send midi notes directly to the instrument.

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