[HN Gopher] I doubt that anything resembling genuine AGI is with...
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I doubt that anything resembling genuine AGI is within reach of
current AI tools
Author : gmays
Score : 92 points
Date : 2025-12-21 05:02 UTC (17 hours ago)
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| mindcrime wrote:
| Terry Tao is a genius, and I am not. So I probably have no
| standing to claim to disagree with him. But I find this post less
| than fulfilling.
|
| For starters, I think we can rightly ask what it means to say
| "genuine artificial general intelligence", as opposed to just
| "artificial general intelligence". Actually, I think it's fair to
| ask what "genuine artificial" $ANYTHING would be.
|
| I _suspect_ that what he means is something like "artificial
| intelligence, but that works just like human intelligence".
| Something like that seems to be what a lot of people are saying
| when they talk about AI and make claims like "that's not _real_
| AI ". But for myself, I reject the notion that we need "genuine
| artificial general intelligence" that works like human
| intelligence in order to say we have artificial general
| intelligence. Human intelligence is a nice existence proof that
| some sort of "general intelligence" is possible, and a nice
| example to model after, but the marquee sign does say
| _artificial_ at the end of the day.
|
| Beyond that... I know, I know - it's the oldest cliche in the
| world, but I will fall back on it because it's still valid, no
| matter how trite. We don't say "airplanes don't really fly"
| because they don't use the exact same _mechanism_ as birds. And I
| don 't see any reason to say that an AI system isn't "really
| intelligent" if it doesn't use the same mechanism as human.
|
| Now maybe I'm wrong and Terry meant something altogether
| different, and all of this is moot. But it felt worth writing
| this out, because I feel like a lot of commenters on this subject
| engage in a line of thinking like what is described above, and I
| think it's a poor way of viewing the issue no matter who is doing
| it.
| npinsker wrote:
| > I suspect that what he means is something like "artificial
| intelligence, but that works just like human intelligence".
|
| I think he means "something that can discover new areas of
| mathematics".
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I'd love to take that bet
| mindcrime wrote:
| Very reasonable, given his background!
|
| That does seem awfully specific though, in the context of
| talking about "general" intelligence. But I suppose it could
| rightly be argued that any intelligence capable of
| "discovering new areas of mathematics" would inherently need
| to be fairly general.
| themafia wrote:
| > That does seem awfully specific though
|
| It's one of a large set of attributes you would expect in
| something called "AGI."
| metalcrow wrote:
| In that case, I'm afraid many people, myself included, would
| not be describable as "general intelligences"!
| enraged_camel wrote:
| The airplane analogy is a good one. Ultimately, if it quacks
| like a duck and walks like a duck, does it really matter if
| it's a real duck or an artificial one? Perhaps only if
| something tries to eat it, or another duck tries to mate with
| it. In most other contexts though it could be a valid
| replacement.
| clort wrote:
| Just out of interest though, can you suggest some of these
| other contexts where you might want a valid replacement for a
| duck that looked like one, walked like one and quacked like
| one but was not one?
| alex43578 wrote:
| Decoy for duck hunting?
| omnimus wrote:
| Are you suggesting LLMs are decoy for investor hunting?
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| In the same sly vein of humour, the first rule of Money
| Club is to never admit that the duck may be lame.
| catoc wrote:
| I interpret "artificial" in "artificial general intelligence"
| as "non-biological".
|
| So in Tao's statement I interpret "genuine" not as an adverb
| modifying the "artificial" adjective but as an attributive
| adjective modifying the noun "intelligence", describing its
| quality... "genuine intelligence that is non-biological in
| nature"
| mindcrime wrote:
| _So in Tao's statement I interpret "genuine" not as an adverb
| modifying the "artificial" adjective but as an attributive
| adjective modifying the noun "intelligence", describing its
| quality... "genuine intelligence that is non-biological in
| nature"_
|
| That's definitely possible. But it seems redundant to phrase
| it that way. That is to say, the goal (the _end_ goal anyway)
| of the AI enterprise has always been, at least as I 've
| always understood it, to make "genuine intelligence that is
| non-biological in nature". That said, Terry is a
| mathematician, not an "AI person" so maybe it makes more
| sense when you look at it from that perspective. I've been
| immersed in AI stuff for 35+ years, so I may have developed a
| bit of myopia in some regards.
| catoc wrote:
| I agree, it's redundant. To us humans - to me at least -
| intelligence is always general (calculator: not;
| chimpansee: a little), so "general intelligence" can also
| already be considered redundant. Using "genuine" is more
| redundancy being heaped on (with the assumed goal of making
| a distinction between "genuine" AGI and tools that appear
| smart in limited domains)
| scellus wrote:
| I find it odd that the post above is downvoted to grey, feels
| like some sort of latent war of viewpoints going on, like below
| some other AI posts. (Although these misvotes are usually fixed
| when the US wakes up.)
|
| The point above is valid. I'd like to deconstruct the concept
| of intelligence even more. What humans are able to do is a
| relatively artificial collection of skills a physical and
| social organism needs. The so highly valued intelligence around
| math etc. is a corner case of those abilities.
|
| There's no reason to think that human mathematical intelligence
| is unique by its structure, an isolated well-defined skill.
| Artificial systems are likely to be able to do much more, maybe
| not exactly the same peak ability, but adjacent ones, many of
| which will be superhuman and augmentative to what humans do.
| This will likely include "new math" in some sense too.
| omnimus wrote:
| What everybody is looking for is imagination and invention.
| Current AI systems can give best guess statistical answer
| from dataset the've been fed. It is always compression.
|
| The problem and what most people intuitively understand is
| that this compression is not enough. There is something more
| going on because people can come up with novel
| ideas/solutions and whats more important they can judge and
| figure out if the solution will work. So even if the core of
| the idea is "compressed" or "mixed" from past knowledge there
| is some other process going on that leads to the important
| part of invention-progress.
|
| That is why people hate the term AI because it is just
| partial capability of "inteligence" or it might even be
| complete illusion of inteligence that is nowhere close what
| people would expect.
| in-silico wrote:
| > Current AI systems can give best guess statistical answer
| from dataset the've been fed.
|
| What about reinforcement learning? RL models don't train on
| an existing dataset, they try their own solutions and learn
| from feedback.
|
| RL models can definitely "invent" new things. Here's an
| example where they design novel molecules that bind with a
| protein: https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/article/39
| /4/btad157...
| omnimus wrote:
| Finding variations in constrained haystack with
| measurable defined results is what machine learning has
| always been good at. Tracing most efficient Trackmania
| route is impressive and the resulting route might be
| original as in human would never come up with it. But is
| it actually novel in creative, critical way? Isn't it
| simply computational brute force? How big that force
| would have to be in physical or less constrained world?
| Peteragain wrote:
| Exactly! I am going for "glorified auto complete" is far more
| useful than it seems. In GOFAI terms, it does case-based
| reasoning.. but better.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| I call it clippy's revengeance
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| Clippy 2: Clippy Goes Nuclear
|
| But more seriously, this is ELIZA with network effects.
| Credulous multitudes chatting with a system that they believe
| is sentient.
| Davidzheng wrote:
| The text continues "with current AI tools" which is not clearly
| defined to me (does it mean current Gen + scaffold? Anything
| which is llm reasoning model? Anything built with a large llm
| inside? ). In any case, the title is misleading for not
| containing the end of the sentence. Please can we fix the title?
| Davidzheng wrote:
| Also i think the main source of interest is because it is said
| by Terry, so that should be in the title too.
| blobbers wrote:
| I think what Terry is saying is that with the current set of
| tools, there are classes of problems requiring cleverness: where
| you can guess and check (glorified autocomplete), check answer,
| fail and then add information from failure and repeat.
|
| I guess ultimately what is intelligence? We compact our memories,
| forget things, and try repeatedly. Our inputs are a bit more
| diverse but ultimately we autocomplete our lives. Hmm... maybe
| we've already achieved this.
| judahmeek wrote:
| Some one recently told me that their definition of intelligence
| was data-efficient extrapolation & I think that definition is
| pretty good as it separates intelligence from knowledge,
| sentience, & sapience.
| mentalgear wrote:
| Some researchers proposed using, instead of the term "AI", the
| much more fitting "self-parametrising probabilistic model" or
| just advanced auto-complete - that would certainly take the hype-
| inducing marketing PR away.
| attendant3446 wrote:
| The term "AI" didn't make sense from the beginning, but I guess
| it sounded cool and that's why everything is "AI" now. And I
| doubt it will change, regardless of its correctness.
| chimprich wrote:
| John McCarthy coined the term "Artificial Intelligence" in
| the 1950s. I doubt he was trying to be cool. The whole field
| of research involved in getting computers to do intelligent
| things has been referred to as AI for many decades.
| metalman wrote:
| AI is intermitent wipers, for words, and the two are completly
| tied, as the perfect test for AI, will be to run intermitent
| wipers, to everybodys satisfaction.
| pavlov wrote:
| That's like arguing that washing machines should be called
| rapid-rotation water agitators.
|
| It's the result that consumers are interested in, not the
| mechanics of how it's achieved. Software engineers are often
| extraordinarily bad at seeing the difference because they're so
| interested in the implementation details.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| I'd be mad if washing machines were marketed as a "robot
| maid"
| pavlov wrote:
| A woman from 1825 would probably happily accept that
| description though (notwithstanding that the word "robot"
| wasn't invented yet).
|
| A machine that magically replaces several hours of her
| manual work? As far as she's concerned, it's a specialized
| maid that doesn't eat at her table and never gets sick.
| auggierose wrote:
| Machines do get "sick" though, and they eat electricity.
| pavlov wrote:
| Negligible cost compared to a real maid in 1825. The
| washing machine also doesn't get pregnant by your teenage
| son and doesn't run away one night with your silver
| spoons -- the upkeep risks and replacement costs are much
| lower.
| auggierose wrote:
| In 1825 both electricity prices and replacement costs
| would have been unaffordable for anyone, though. Because
| there was literally no prize you could pay to get these
| things.
| ljlolel wrote:
| They do and will randomly kill people
| omnimus wrote:
| Shame we are in 2025 huh? Ask someone today if they
| accept washing machine as robot maid.
| pavlov wrote:
| The point is that, as far as development of AI is
| concerned, 2025 consumers are in the same position as the
| 1825 housewife.
|
| In both cases, automation of what was previously human
| labor is very early and they've seen almost nothing yet.
|
| I agree that in the year 2225 people are not going to
| consider basic LLMs artificial intelligences, just like
| we don't consider a washing machine a maid replacement
| anymore.
| watwut wrote:
| 19 century washing machines were called washing/mangling
| machines.
|
| They were not called maids nor personified.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| "Washer" and "dryer" are accepted colloquial terms for
| these appliances.
|
| I could even see the humour in "washer-bot" and "dryer-bot"
| if they did anything notably more complex. But we don't
| need/want appliances to become more complex than is
| necessary. We usually just call such things _programmable_.
|
| I can accept calling our new, over-hyped, hallucinating
| overlords _chatbots_. But to be fair to the technology, it
| is we chatty humans doing all the hyping and hallucinating.
|
| The market capitalisation for this sector is sickly
| feverish -- all we have done is to have built a
| significantly better ELIZA [1]. Not a _HIGGINS_ and
| certainly not AGI. If this results in the construction of
| new nuclear power facilities, maybe we can do the latter
| with significant improvement too. (I hope.)
|
| My toaster and oven will never be bots to me. Although my
| current vehicle is better than earlier generations, it
| contains plenty of bad code and it spews telemetry. It
| should not be trusted with any important task.
|
| [1] _ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
| kylebyte wrote:
| The problem is that intelligence isn't the result, or at the
| very least the ideas that word evokes in people don't match
| the actual capabilities of the machine.
|
| Washing is a useful word to describe what that machine does.
| Our current setup is like if washing machines were called
| "badness removers," and there was a widespread belief that we
| were only a few years out from a new model of washing machine
| being able to cure diseases.
| lxgr wrote:
| Arguably there isn't even a widely shared, coherent
| definition of intelligence: To some people, it might mean
| pure problem solving without in-task learning; others
| equate it with encyclopedic knowledge etc.
|
| Given that, I consider it quite possible that we'll reach a
| point where even more people will consider LLMs having
| reached or surpassed AGI, while others still only consider
| it "sufficiently advanced autocomplete".
| kylebyte wrote:
| I'd believe this more if companies weren't continuing to
| use words like reason, understand, learn, and genius when
| talking about these systems.
|
| I buy that there's disagreement on what intelligence
| means in the enthusiast space, but "thinks like people"
| is pretty clearly the general understanding of the word,
| and the one that tech companies are hoping to leverage.
| edanm wrote:
| What about letting customers actually try the products and
| figure out for themselves what it does and whether that's
| useful to them?
|
| I don't understand this mindset that because someone stuck
| the label "AI" on it, consumers are suddenly unable to
| think for themselves. AI as a marketing label has been used
| for dozens of years, yet only now is it taking off like
| crazy. The word hasn't change - what it's actually capable
| of doing _has_.
| gudii2 wrote:
| > What about letting customers actually try the products
| and figure out for themselves what it does and whether
| that's useful to them?
|
| Yikes. I'm guessing you've never lost anyone to
| "alternative" medical treatments.
| jononor wrote:
| Businesses are interested in something that can work for
| them. And the way the LLM based agentic systems are going, it
| might actually deliver on "Automated Knowledge Workers".
| Probably not with full autonomy, but in teams lead by a
| human. The human needs to tend the AKW, much like we do with
| washing machines and industrial automation machines.
| dgeiser13 wrote:
| Current "AI" is the manual washboard.
| red75prime wrote:
| It's a nice naming, fellow language-capable electrobiochemical
| autonomous agent.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| The proof of Riemann hypothesis is [....autocomplete here...]
| ponector wrote:
| I prefer Tesla's approach to call their adaptive cruise control
| "FSD (supervised)".
|
| AI (supervised).
| moktonar wrote:
| There's a guaranteed path to AGI, but it's blocked behind
| computational complexity. Finding an efficient algorithm to
| simulate Quantum Mechanics should be top priority for those
| seeking AGI. A more promising way around it is using Quantum
| Computing, but we'll have to wait for that to become good
| enough..
| themafia wrote:
| Required energy density at the necessary scale will be your
| next hurdle.
| moktonar wrote:
| Once you have the efficient algorithm you approximate
| asymptotically with the energy you have, of course you can't
| obtain the same precision
| themafia wrote:
| Or speed. I think Frank Herbert was on to something in
| Dune. The energy efficiency of the human brain is hard to
| beat. Perhaps we should invest in discovering "spice." I
| think it might be more worthwhile.
|
| Okay, enough eggnog and posting.
| legulere wrote:
| How would simulating quantum mechanics help with AGI?
| nddkkfkf wrote:
| Obviously, quantum supremacy is semiologically orthogonal to
| AGI (Artificial General Inteligence) ontological recursive
| synapses... this is trivial.
| nddkkfkf wrote:
| now buy the stock
| moktonar wrote:
| By simulating it
| legulere wrote:
| What exactly should get simulated and how do you think
| quantum mechanics will help with this?
| moktonar wrote:
| At least the solar system I would say. Quantum mechanics
| will help you do that in the correct way to obtain what
| Nature already obtained: general intelligence.
| lxgr wrote:
| That would arguably not be artificial intelligence, but rather
| simulated natural intelligence.
|
| It also seems orders of magnitude less resource efficient than
| higher-level approaches.
| moktonar wrote:
| What's the difference? Arguably the latter will be better IMO
| than the former
| lxgr wrote:
| How many orders of magnitude? Nearly as many as it would be
| less efficient?
| moktonar wrote:
| It's like comparing apples and oranges
| relistan wrote:
| These things work well on the extremely limited task impetus that
| we give them. Even if we sidestep the question of whether or not
| LLMs are actually on the path to AGI, Imagine instead the amount
| of computing and electrical power required with current computing
| methods and hardware in order to respond to and process all the
| input handled by a person at every moment of the day. Somewhere
| in between current inputs and handling the full load of inputs
| the brain handles may lie "AGI" but it's not clear there is
| anything like that on the near horizon, if only because of
| computing power constraints.
| trio8453 wrote:
| > This results in the somewhat unintuitive combination of a
| technology that can be very useful and impressive, while
| simultaneously being fundamentally unsatisfying and disappointing
|
| Useful = great. We've made incredible progress in the past 3-5
| years.
|
| The people who are disappointed have their standards and
| expectations set at "science fiction".
| lxgr wrote:
| I think many people are now learning that their definition of
| intelligence was actually not very precise.
|
| From what I've seen, in response to that, goalposts are then
| often moved in the way that requires least updating of
| somebody's political, societal, metaphysical etc. worldview.
| (This also includes updates in favor of "this will definitely
| achieve AGI soon", fwiw.)
| knallfrosch wrote:
| I remember when the goal posts were set at the "Turing test."
|
| That's certainly not coming back.
| rightbyte wrote:
| If you know the tricks wont you be able to figure out if
| some chat is done by a LLM?
| danaris wrote:
| _Or_ the people who are disappointed were listening to the AI
| hype men like Sam Altman, who have, in fact, been promising AGI
| or something very like it for years now.
|
| I don't think it's fair to deride people who are disappointed
| in LLMs for not being AGI when many very prominent proponents
| have been claiming they are or soon will be exactly that.
| Taek wrote:
| We seem to be moving the goalposts on AGI, are we not? 5 years
| ago, the argument that AGI wasn't here yet was that you couldn't
| take something like AlphaGo and use it to play chess. If you
| wanted that, you had to do a new training run with new training
| data.
|
| But now, we have LLMs that can reliably beat video games like
| Pokemon, without any specialized training for playing video
| games. And those same LLMs can write code, do math, write poetry,
| be language tutors, find optimal flight routes from one city to
| another during the busy Christmas season, etc.
|
| How does that not fit the definition of "General Intelligence"?
| It's literally as capable as a high school student for almost any
| general task you throw it at.
| lxgr wrote:
| I think we're noticing that our goalposts for AGI were largely
| "we'll recognize it when we see it", and now as we are getting
| to some interesting places, it turns out that different people
| actually understood very different things by that.
| oidar wrote:
| I think the games tasks are worth exploring more. If you look
| at that recent Pokemon post - it's not as capable as a high
| school student - it took a long, long time. I have a private
| set of tests, that any 8 year old could easily solve that any
| LLM just absolutely fails on. I suspect that plenty of the
| people claiming AGI isn't here yet have similar personal tests.
| keyle wrote:
| I am quite happy with LLM being more and more available 24/7 to
| be useful to human kind ... than some sentient being that never
| sleep and is more intelligent than me, with its own agenda.
| netsharc wrote:
| There might not be a set agenda, but it might lead to the
| domination of a particular type of knowledge and the
| destruction of others:
|
| https://aeon.co/essays/generative-ai-has-access-to-a-small-s...
| brador wrote:
| Remember when your goal posts were Turing test?
|
| The only question remaining is what is the end point of AGI
| capability.
|
| What's the final IQ we'll hit, and more importantly why will it
| end there?
|
| Power limits? Hardware bandwidth limit? Storage limits? the AI
| creation math scales to infinity so that's not an issue.
|
| Source data limits? Most likely. We should have recorded more. We
| should have recorded more.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Last I checked the Turing test stands. I've only seen reports
| of LLMs winning under some weird conditions. Interestingly,
| these were a year or two ago, and nobody seem to have tried
| Turing tests lately with newer LLMs.
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