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Juan Lopez-Valcarcel's avatar

Thank you Rob for this brilliant analysis of the long and short of AI hopes and hype.

I particularly liked your historical perspective of prior tech waves as I recently wrote a short post on the โ€œeternal sunshine of the spotless technology mindโ€ that chooses to ignore the messy realities of implementations.

https://www.valuecreationplan.com/p/the-eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless

The intriguing question that I think we are about to face as a humans might not be how we define AGI, but whether human behaviour is uncomfortably probabilistic and deterministic when observed at computer scale.

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Rob Nelson's avatar

Thank you, Juan, for the kind works and link to your work. I opened the tab and will take a look at my next opportunity.

One of the ideas I've been turning over in my head is whether the analogy of the human mind as an electronic computer has run its course, and what new analogies might be useful to make sense of intelligence and other cognitive processes. Undoubtedly, humans think probabilistically, and much about our behavior, including cognitive behavior, is determined or constrained.

I think this is an area where the analogy to a computer or algorithm fails. The human experiences that shape us and our behavior are obscured in important ways when we think in terms of computation. This is especially true at scales where we compare the collective intelligence of humans to networks of computers.

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Juan Lopez-Valcarcel's avatar

Thanks Rob, a fascinating topic. I do agree that the analogy has run its course.

The human experience that makes each of us unique as individuals also makes us fairly predictable as a collective when expressed in probable outcomesโ€ฆ but this does not mean we are just a processing machine.

Computers are increasingly good at creating the illusion that they are human, but they are not.

I look forward to reading more of your articles.

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Juan Lopez-Valcarcel's avatar

Rob, I think you will find this research interesting in the context of our conversation above. Have a nice weekend.

https://substack.com/@aidisruptor/note/c-79762343

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