You mean the robots Juergen Schmidhuber builds for a living?
That would be scary. But I have to take your word for it. What I had in mind is e.g. something like this. This (the astounding athletic power of quadcopters) looks like the former has already been achieved. But so far I suspected that this only works given a structured environment (not chaotic), and given a narrow set of tasks. From a true insect-level AI I would e.g. expect that it could attack and kill enemy soldiers under real-world combat situations, while avoiding being hit itself. Since this is what insects are capable of.
I don’t want to nitpick though. If you say that Schmidhuber is there, then I’ll have to update. But I’ll also have to keep care that I am not too stunned by what seems like a big breakthrough simply because I don’t understand the details. For example, someone once told me that “Schmidhuber’s system solved Towers of Hanoi on a mere desktop computer using a universal search algorithm with a simple kind of memory.” Sounds stunning. But what am I to make of it? I really can’t judge how much progress this is. Here is a quote:
So Schmidhuber solved this, USING A UNIVERSAL SEARCH ALGORITHM, in 2005, on a mere DESKTOP COMPUTER that’s 100.000 times slower than your brain. Why does this not impress you? Because it’s already been done? Why? I say you should be mightily impressed by this result!!!!
Yes, okay. Naively this sounds like general AI is imminent. But not even MIRI believes this....
You see, I am aware of a lot of exciting stuff. But I can only do my best in estimating the truth. And currently I don’t think that enough speaks in favor of MIRI. That doesn’t mean I have falsified MIRI’s beliefs. But I have a lot of data points and arguments that in my opinion reduce the likelihood of a set of beliefs that already requires extraordinary evidence to take seriously (ignoring expected utility maximization, which tells me to give all my money to MIRI, even if the risk is astronomically low).
That would be scary. But I have to take your word for it. What I had in mind is e.g. something like this. This (the astounding athletic power of quadcopters) looks like the former has already been achieved. But so far I suspected that this only works given a structured environment (not chaotic), and given a narrow set of tasks. From a true insect-level AI I would e.g. expect that it could attack and kill enemy soldiers under real-world combat situations, while avoiding being hit itself. Since this is what insects are capable of.
I don’t want to nitpick though. If you say that Schmidhuber is there, then I’ll have to update. But I’ll also have to keep care that I am not too stunned by what seems like a big breakthrough simply because I don’t understand the details. For example, someone once told me that “Schmidhuber’s system solved Towers of Hanoi on a mere desktop computer using a universal search algorithm with a simple kind of memory.” Sounds stunning. But what am I to make of it? I really can’t judge how much progress this is. Here is a quote:
Yes, okay. Naively this sounds like general AI is imminent. But not even MIRI believes this....
You see, I am aware of a lot of exciting stuff. But I can only do my best in estimating the truth. And currently I don’t think that enough speaks in favor of MIRI. That doesn’t mean I have falsified MIRI’s beliefs. But I have a lot of data points and arguments that in my opinion reduce the likelihood of a set of beliefs that already requires extraordinary evidence to take seriously (ignoring expected utility maximization, which tells me to give all my money to MIRI, even if the risk is astronomically low).