When Will AI Surpass Human Intelligence?

destinyland writes "21 AI experts have predicted the date for four artificial intelligence milestones. Seven predict AIs will achieve Nobel prize-winning performance within 20 years, while five predict that will be accompanied by superhuman intelligence. (The other milestones are passing a 3rd grade-level test, and passing a Turing test.) One also predicted that in 30 years, 'virtually all the intellectual work that is done by trained human beings ... can be done by computers for pennies an hour,' adding that AI 'is likely to eliminate almost all of today's decently paying jobs.' The experts also estimated the probability that an AI passing a Turing test would result in an outcome that's bad for humanity ... and four estimated that probability was greater than 60% — regardless of whether the developer was private, military, or even open source."

Comments

The Turing Test

[mosb1000]

One observed that “making an AGI capable of doing powerful and creative thinking is probably easier than making one that imitates the many, complex behaviors of a human mind — many of which would actually be hindrances when it comes to creating Nobel-quality science.” He observed “humans tend to have minds that bore easily, wander away from a given mental task, and that care about things such as sexual attraction, all which would probably impede scientific ability, rather that promote it.” To successfully emulate a human, a computer might have to disguise many of its abilities, masquerading as being less intelligent — in certain ways — than it actually was. There is no compelling reason to spend time and money developing this capacity in a computer.

This kind of thinking is one of the major things standing in the way of AGI. The complex behaviors of the human mind are what leads to intelligence, they do not detract from it. Our ability to uncover the previously unknown workings of a system comes from our ability to abstract aspects of unrelated experiences and apply/attempt to apply them to the new situation. This can not be achieved by a single-minded number crunching machine, but instead evolves out of an adaptable human being as he goes about his daily life.

Sexual attraction, and other emotional desires, are what drive humans beings to make scientific advancements, build bridges, grow food. How could that be a hindrance to the process? It drives the process.

Finally, the assertion that an AGI would need to mask it's amazing intellect to pass as human is silly. When was the last time you read a particularly insightful comment and concluded that it was written by a computer? When did you notice that the spelling and punctuation in a comment was too perfect? People see that and they don't think anything of it.