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625 points lukebennett | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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irrational ◴[] No.42139106[source]
> The AGI bubble is bursting a little bit

I'm surprised that any of these companies consider what they are working on to be Artificial General Intelligences. I'm probably wrong, but my impression was AGI meant the AI is self aware like a human. An LLM hardly seems like something that will lead to self-awareness.

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Taylor_OD ◴[] No.42139138[source]
I think your definition is off from what most people would define AGI as. Generally, it means being able to think and reason at a human level for a multitude/all tasks or jobs.

"Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) refers to a theoretical form of artificial intelligence that possesses the ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a wide range of tasks at a level comparable to that of a human being."

Altman says AGI could be here in 2025: https://youtu.be/xXCBz_8hM9w?si=F-vQXJgQvJKZH3fv

But he certainly means an LLM that can perform at/above human level in most tasks rather than a self aware entity.

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swatcoder ◴[] No.42139669[source]
On the contrary, I think you're conflating the narrow jargon of the industry with what "most people" would define.

"Most people" naturally associate AGI with the sci-tropes of self-aware human-like agents.

But industries want something more concrete and prospectively-acheivable in their jargon, and so that's where AGI gets redefined as wide task suitability.

And while that's not an unreasonable definition in the context of the industry, it's one that vanishingly few people are actually familiar with.

And the commercial AI vendors benefit greatly from allowing those two usages to conflate in the minds of as many people as possible, as it lets them suggest grand claims while keeping a rhetorical "we obviously never meant that!" in their back pocket

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1. og_kalu ◴[] No.42141180{3}[source]
>But industries want something more concrete and prospectively-acheivable in their jargon, and so that's where AGI gets redefined as wide task suitability.

The term itself (AGI) in the industry has always been about wide task suitability. People may have added their ifs and buts over the years but that aspect of it never got 'redefined'. The earliest uses of the term all talk about how well a machine would be able to perform some set number of tasks at some threshold.

It's no wonder why. Terms like "consciousness" and "self-awareness" are completely useless. It's not about difficulty. It's that you can't do anything at all with those terms except argue around in circles.