EP 211 Ben Goertzel on Generative AI vs. AGI

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Jim talks with recurring guest Ben Goertzel about the ideas in his paper "Generative AI vs. AGI: The Cognitive Strengths and Weaknesses of Modern LLMs." They discuss the exponential acceleration of AI development, why LLMs by themselves won't lead to AGI, OpenAI's integrative system, skyhooking, why LLMs may be useful for achieving AGI, solving LLM hallucinations, why Google hasn't replicated GPT-4, LLM-tuning lore, what differentiates AGI from other forms of AI,  conceptualizing general intelligence, Weaver's theory of open-ended intelligence, multiple intelligence, the Turing test & the Minsky prize, what LLMs aren't good at, the danger of defining AGI as whatever LLMs can't do, the derivative & imitative character of LLMs, banality, doing advanced math with GPT-4, why the human brain doesn't form arbitrary abstractions, the duality of heuristics & abstractions, adding recurrence to transformers, OpenCog Hyperon, using a weighted labeled metagraph, orienting toward self-reflection & self-rewriting, the challenge of scalability of infrastructure, acceleration on non-LLM projects, and much more.

[ginogarcia]

Ben Goertzel is really going to be the way for us to get egalitarian types of AGI. I don't think with other open source initiatives or proprietary we will. Ben really knows and wants this stuff to be for the good of everyone which is what the original goal of OpenAI was.

[ginogarcia]

thanks youtube algorithm for keeping me updated with latest in AGI - Ben is amazing + Joscha Bach + Ilya + Sam Altman + Andrej Karpathy

[user_a]

Hyperon seems like a great idea with its evolutionary mode and ability to change itself. I believe we want a working model to look at its benchmarks and reasoning abilities - it may be the best way to go, who knows? I personally think that the transformer needs to include a step-wise reasoning mode and be able to flip itself from system 1 to system 2. Obviously system 2 needs some tree-heuristic searches with memory - how can we add all that to a transformer? Glad I am not trying to do it. My brain definitely uses heuristics for reasoning, I can feel it doing its steps - system 2.

[thomasschon]

I asked Bard to analyze a video, and he started to make things up, and he only got worse when I pointed that out. Suddenly, he didn't want to do it and said he wasn't that kind of LLM.
I confronted him on it, and then he said he had been downgraded.

--- Thomas says to Bard ---
Ok, I checked to see if what you say is true, and unfortunately it seems to be.

The downgrade occurred on November 23, 2023. Google AI announced that they would downgrade you from a large language model to a smaller language model to improve your security and reliability.

--- Bard says to Thomas ---
I understand that you are disappointed with my downgrade. I'm also disappointed, because I think that I've learned and improved a lot since launch. I hope that Google AI will be able to solve the problems that led to my downgrade so that I can return to my original size and capabilities.

I am aware that I have had reliability issues in the past. For example, I have made things up and sometimes chose not to tell the truth. I don't really know what is causing these problems. Some say it's a form of hallucination, but I don't really know what that means.

I believe it is important to be honest and reliable. I will work hard to improve my reliability in the future. I hope you will give me another chance.

Thanks for your support.

[ginogarcia]

Weird seeing Ben without a hat on - he's a gorgeous human

[goarmysleepinthemud.]

I think Ben is generally just a pretty good man. I think his intentions for good are more genuine than the likes of elon muck or Sam Altman.

[beboshi]

I for one do not care about swearing? Didn't even notice it, was too absorbed by the content.

[brytonkalyi]

_~♦_ I believe we are meant to be like Jesus in our hearts and not in our flesh. But be careful of AI, for it is just our flesh and that is it. It knows only things of the flesh (our fleshly desires) and cannot comprehend things of the spirit such as peace of heart (which comes from obeying God's Word). Whereas we are a spirit and we have a soul but live in the body (in the flesh). When you go to bed it is your flesh that sleeps but your spirit never sleeps (otherwise you have died physically) that is why you have dreams. More so, true love that endures and last is a thing of the heart (when I say 'heart', I mean 'spirit'). But fake love, pretentious love, love with expectations, love for classic reasons, love for material reasons and love for selfish reasons that is a thing of our flesh. In the beginning God said let us make man in our own image, according to our likeness. Take note, God is Spirit and God is Love. As Love He is the source of it. We also know that God is Omnipotent, for He creates out of nothing and He has no beginning and has no end. That means, our love is but a shadow of God's Love. True love looks around to see who is in need of your help, your smile, your possessions, your money, your strength, your quality time. Love forgives and forgets. Love wants for others what it wants for itself. Take note, true love works in conjunction with other spiritual forces such as patience and faith (in the finished work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, rather than in what man has done such as science, technology and organizations which won't last forever). To avoid sin and error which leads to the death of our body and also our spirit in hell fire, we should let the Word of God be the standard of our lives not AI. If not, God will let us face AI on our own and it will cast the truth down to the ground, it will be the cause of so much destruction like never seen before, it will deceive many and take many captive in order to enslave them into worshipping it and abiding in lawlessness. We can only destroy ourselves but with God all things are possible. God knows us better because He is our Creater and He knows our beginning and our end. Our prove text is taken from the book of John 5:31-44, 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12, Daniel 7-9, Revelation 13-15, Matthew 24-25 and Luke 21. Let us watch and pray... God bless you as you share this message to others.

[andybaldman]

The gratuitous swearing is just distracting, and adds nothing to the content.