But he only admitted that two other methods would work—builting a mechanical duplicate of the human brain and evolving AI via natural selection.
To be fair, he said that those two will work, and (perhaps?) admitted the possibility of “run advanced neural network algorithms” eventually working. Emphasis mine:
What do all these proposals have in common?
They are all ways to make yourself believe that you can build an Artificial Intelligence, even if you don’t understand exactly how intelligence works.
Agreed. The right interpretation there is methods 4 and 5 are ~guaranteed to work, given sufficient resources and time, while methods 1-3 less than guaranteed to work. I stand by my claim that EY was clearly projecting confident doubt that neural networks would achieve intelligence without a deep theoretical understanding of intelligence in these posts. I think I underemphasized the implication of this passage that methods 1-3 could possibly work, but I think I accurately assessed the tone of extreme skepticism on EY’s part.
With the enormous benefit of 15 years of hindsight, we can now say that message was misleading or mistaken, take your pick. As I say, I wouldn’t find fault with Eliezer or anyone who believed him at the time for making this mistake; I didn’t even have an opinion at the time, much less an interesting mistake! I would only find fault with attempts to stretch the argument and portray him as “technically not wrong” in some uninteresting sense.
To be fair, he said that those two will work, and (perhaps?) admitted the possibility of “run advanced neural network algorithms” eventually working. Emphasis mine:
Agreed. The right interpretation there is methods 4 and 5 are ~guaranteed to work, given sufficient resources and time, while methods 1-3 less than guaranteed to work. I stand by my claim that EY was clearly projecting confident doubt that neural networks would achieve intelligence without a deep theoretical understanding of intelligence in these posts. I think I underemphasized the implication of this passage that methods 1-3 could possibly work, but I think I accurately assessed the tone of extreme skepticism on EY’s part.
With the enormous benefit of 15 years of hindsight, we can now say that message was misleading or mistaken, take your pick. As I say, I wouldn’t find fault with Eliezer or anyone who believed him at the time for making this mistake; I didn’t even have an opinion at the time, much less an interesting mistake! I would only find fault with attempts to stretch the argument and portray him as “technically not wrong” in some uninteresting sense.