Lack of clarity and consensus on terminology and expectations for advancements in AI and AGI

Signals over time

2 observed signals across 1 sources, tracked for 2 days. Confidence: low.

What people are saying Observed

• “I would like to know how much of the progress comes from effectively combining existing research programs plus massive persistence, and how much is AlphaZero-esque RLVR completely independent of training data. Since I cannot get anybody to care about this question (even though I think it's vital for guessing what the future trajectory will look like -- are we going to complete existing research programs or start new ones?), I live in ignorance and wait for the day when the answer becomes clear. In looking at this over the past hour, I haven't seen clear evidence one way or the other. Some of the stuff is highly unexpected (like the multiplication algorithm), but counterexample-y, and about the rest the professional mathematicians online seem to have a consensus that it's not "breaking through fundamental obstacles". I suspect neither of us is competent to judge that.”

  Hacker News · frustration

• “Uh, why does that need a stronger term than just “AI”? I don’t feel like the goal posts have moved at all. I think most of us have a pretty good and stable intuition of what AGI should be. Like, just a generally intelligent robot for instance? Nothing too fancy. Just use one of those robot dogs. Don’t have to be smarter than a dog either. But you should be able to put an artificial brain in it and have something that can act about as intelligently as a dog, in a stable way, over the course of 10 years. Hell, to make the bar even easier: could make it a believable NPC dog in a game. We’ve pushed AI as close to edge of AGI as I could imagine. It’s hard not to think we’ll find some algorithm that pushes us over the edge fairly soon. But until we actually get there, let’s not exaggerate. I mean, when we do get an AI algorithm that can actually learn like a human/animal intelligence.. what would we call it if we’ve already used “AGI”? “Very General Artificial Intelligence”? I’m almost more inclined to start using “ASI” first. Even if our LLMs are not general in the way I’m thinking of, they’re clearly superior to an average human on every aspect they’ve been trained on. They’re als”

  Hacker News · frustration