re: Leaders of movements being skeptical of the notion of AGI.
Reflecting more, my impression is that Timnit Gebru is skeptical about the sci-fiy descriptions of AGI, and even more so about the social motives of people working on developing (safe) AGI. She does not say that AGI is an impossible concept or not actually a risk. She seems to question the overlapping groups of white male geeks who have been diverting efforts away from other societal issues, to both promoting AGI development and warning of AGI x-risks.
Regarding Jaron Lanier, yes, (re)reading this post I agree that he seems to totally dismiss the notion of AGI, seeing it more a result of a religious kind of thinking under which humans toil away at offering the training data necessary for statistical learning algorithms to function without being compensated.
re: Leaders of movements being skeptical of the notion of AGI.
Reflecting more, my impression is that Timnit Gebru is skeptical about the sci-fiy descriptions of AGI, and even more so about the social motives of people working on developing (safe) AGI. She does not say that AGI is an impossible concept or not actually a risk. She seems to question the overlapping groups of white male geeks who have been diverting efforts away from other societal issues, to both promoting AGI development and warning of AGI x-risks.
Regarding Jaron Lanier, yes, (re)reading this post I agree that he seems to totally dismiss the notion of AGI, seeing it more a result of a religious kind of thinking under which humans toil away at offering the training data necessary for statistical learning algorithms to function without being compensated.