Just how open the question of time scale for when we will have human level AI is highlighted by a recent report by Stuart Armstrong and Kaj Sotala, of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, an organization that itself has researchers worrying about evil AI. But in this more sober report, the authors analyze 95 predictions made between 1950 and the present on when human level AI will come about. They show that there is no difference between predictions made by experts and non-experts. And they also show that over that 60 year time frame there is a strong bias towards predicting the arrival of human level AI as between 15 and 25 years from the time the prediction was made. To me that says that no one knows, they just guess, and historically so far most predictions have been outright wrong!
The MIRI mention:
Do you feel that is a fair summary of your report?
Yeah.