but I have a hard time thinking of examples of the arguments being made in a rigorous way in the academic literature. This is surprising because it’s a question with real practical import for humanity’s future.
Why does that seem surprising to you? You are trying to forecast future technological development, and there is no general rigorous way of doing it.
The best you can get are negative statements. Some are strict impossibility proofs (perpetual mobiles, faster than light travel, etc.), some are more informal implausibility arguments, like the ones advanced by Tom Murphy on the Do the Math blog.
Positive statements in the form “we will develop technology X”, where X is a technology that doesn’t already exist at least in some prototypal form, are wild speculations. Historically, such predictions, even when made by domain experts, turned out to be wrong more often than not, and conversely actual innovations were typically not predicted decades in advance.
Regarding human-level AI, some people (Penrose et al) tried to put forward impossibility arguments, but these arguments are generally considered uncompelling and probably incorrect.
Given the present understanding, it seems that AI is not theoretically impossible, but this tells us nothing about its practical feasibility.
Why does that seem surprising to you? You are trying to forecast future technological development, and there is no general rigorous way of doing it.
The best you can get are negative statements. Some are strict impossibility proofs (perpetual mobiles, faster than light travel, etc.), some are more informal implausibility arguments, like the ones advanced by Tom Murphy on the Do the Math blog.
Positive statements in the form “we will develop technology X”, where X is a technology that doesn’t already exist at least in some prototypal form, are wild speculations. Historically, such predictions, even when made by domain experts, turned out to be wrong more often than not, and conversely actual innovations were typically not predicted decades in advance.
Regarding human-level AI, some people (Penrose et al) tried to put forward impossibility arguments, but these arguments are generally considered uncompelling and probably incorrect. Given the present understanding, it seems that AI is not theoretically impossible, but this tells us nothing about its practical feasibility.