I agree about ems being nowhere in sight, versus steady progress in other methods. I also disagree with Hanson about timeframe (I don’t see it taking 300 years). I also agree that general algorithms will be very important, probably more important than Hanson said. I also put a lower probability on a prolonged AI winter than Hanson.
But as you said, AGI still isn’t here. I’d take it a step further—did the Hanson debates even have unambiguous, coherent ideas of what “AGI” refers to?
Of progress toward AGI, “how much” happened since the Hanson debate? This is thoroughly nebulous and gives very little information about a forecasting track record, even though I disagree with Hanson. With the way Eliezer is positioned in this debate, he can just point to any impressive developments, and say that goes in his favor. We have practically no way of objectively evaluating that. If someone already agrees “the event happened”, they update that Eliezer got it right. If they disagree, or if they aren’t sure what the criteria were, they don’t.
Being able to say post-hoc say that Eliezer “looks closer to the truth” is very different from how we measure forecasting performance, and for good reason. If I was judging this, the “prediction” absolutely resolves as “ambiguous”, despite me disagreeing with Hanson on more points in their debate.
I agree about ems being nowhere in sight, versus steady progress in other methods. I also disagree with Hanson about timeframe (I don’t see it taking 300 years). I also agree that general algorithms will be very important, probably more important than Hanson said. I also put a lower probability on a prolonged AI winter than Hanson.
But as you said, AGI still isn’t here. I’d take it a step further—did the Hanson debates even have unambiguous, coherent ideas of what “AGI” refers to?
Of progress toward AGI, “how much” happened since the Hanson debate? This is thoroughly nebulous and gives very little information about a forecasting track record, even though I disagree with Hanson. With the way Eliezer is positioned in this debate, he can just point to any impressive developments, and say that goes in his favor. We have practically no way of objectively evaluating that. If someone already agrees “the event happened”, they update that Eliezer got it right. If they disagree, or if they aren’t sure what the criteria were, they don’t.
Being able to say post-hoc say that Eliezer “looks closer to the truth” is very different from how we measure forecasting performance, and for good reason. If I was judging this, the “prediction” absolutely resolves as “ambiguous”, despite me disagreeing with Hanson on more points in their debate.