The underling physical laws governing it are fully understood.
A blueprint for the technology is available and the universal consensus of scientists is that this blueprint will work.
A worldwide consortium of scientists has undertaken to build the technology and are funded tune of $10B’s
For technology B, none of this is true:
There is no agreement on the underlying rules describing how and whether the system will work
The general consensus is that existing blueprints will not work no matter how much they are scaled up
The largest projects are in the $10M’s of dollars and are frequently deemed “too expensive”
Which of these technologies would you expect to be developed first?
I would argue, based on this evidence, that AGI is no closer (and probably in fact much further) away than Commercial Nuclear Fusion. I furthermore suspect there is less than a 50⁄50 chance that nuclear fusion will achieve “positive energy” by ITER’s 2035 target.
AGI is at least as far away as Nuclear Fusion.
Consider two future technologies.
For technology A:
The underling physical laws governing it are fully understood.
A blueprint for the technology is available and the universal consensus of scientists is that this blueprint will work.
A worldwide consortium of scientists has undertaken to build the technology and are funded tune of $10B’s
For technology B, none of this is true:
There is no agreement on the underlying rules describing how and whether the system will work
The general consensus is that existing blueprints will not work no matter how much they are scaled up
The largest projects are in the $10M’s of dollars and are frequently deemed “too expensive”
Which of these technologies would you expect to be developed first?
I would argue, based on this evidence, that AGI is no closer (and probably in fact much further) away than Commercial Nuclear Fusion. I furthermore suspect there is less than a 50⁄50 chance that nuclear fusion will achieve “positive energy” by ITER’s 2035 target.