1) No one knows what exactly makes humans "intelligent" and therefore 2) No one knows what it would take to achieve AGI
Go back through history and AI / AGI has been a couple of decades away for several decades now.
To me, the Ashley Madison hack in 2015 was 'good enough' for AGI.
No really.
You somehow managed to get real people to chat with bots and pay to do so. Yes, caveats about cheaters apply here, and yes, those bots are incredibly primitive compared to today.
But, really, what else do you want out of the bots? Flying cars, cancer cures, frozen irradiated Mars bunkers? We were mostly getting there already. It'll speed thing up a bit, sure, but mostly just because we can't be arsed to actually fund research anymore. The bots are just making things cheaper, maybe.
No, be real. We wanted cold hard cash out of them. And even those crummy catfish bots back in 2015 were doing the job well enough.
We can debate 'intelligence' until the sun dies out and will still never be satisfied.
But the reality is that we want money, and if you take that low, terrible, and venal standard as the passing bar, then we've been here for a decade.
(oh man, just read that back, I think I need to take a day off here, youch!)
Only in a symbolic way. Money is just debt. It doesn't mean anything if you can't call the loan and get back what you are owed. On the surface, that means stuff like food, shelter, cars, vacations, etc. But beyond the surface, what we really want is other people who will do anything we please. Power, as we often call it. AGI is, to some, seen as the way to give them "power".
But, you are right, the human fundamentally can never be satisfied. Even if AGI delivers on every single one of our wildest dreams, we'll adapt, it will become normal, and then it will no longer be good enough.
Yes, and? A good Litmus test about which humans are, shall we say, not welcome in this new society.
There are plenty of us out there that have fixed our upper limits of wealth and we don't want more, and we have proven it during our lives.
F.ex. people get 5x more but it comes with 20x more responsibility, they burn out, get back to a job that's good enough and not stressful and pays everything they need from life, settle there, never change it.
Let's not judge humanity at large by a handful of psychopaths that would overdose and die at 22 years old if given the chance. Please.
And no, before you say it: no, I'll never get to the point where "it's never enough" and no, I am not deluding myself. Nope.
And... nothing?
> Let's not judge humanity at large by a handful of psychopaths that would overdose and die at 22 years old if given the chance. Please.
No need for appeal to emotion. It has no logical relevance.
Is your life experience and observations on the average human the opposite to mine?
> But, you are right, the human fundamentally can never be satisfied
That's usually associated with "they want more and more". If you feel that's wrong then just correct me and move any argument forward. Telegraphic replies are not an interesting discussion format.
I was commenting on what I'm observing in most people I've met. But yeah, I'll agree I'm venturing into the clouds now and the discussion will become strictly theoretical and thus fruitless. Fair enough.
Thanks for indulging. :) Was interesting to hear takes so very different than mine.