Ask HN: Why LLM are believed to reach us to AGI?

by alexander2002on 12/28/2024, 7:33 AMwith 3 comments

I am not talking about intution or random cryptic tweets?. I am not an expert and seem to be ignorant of why LLMS are believed to reach us to AGI.

I know LLMS are quiet powerful but AGI is a seperate beast imo and apparently people are claiming on twitter( including experts) that we will reach AGI in 3 years (or less).

I am a layman and this seems like the world is going to change dramtically if that is true and I want to be prepared for the change.

However, I am skeptical of all the claims particularly that we are near AGI in 3 years.So I need to know why experts think AGI is near

by Terr_on 12/28/2024, 7:40 AM

Follow the money: Much of the "predictions" and "everyone is sooo worried about" stuff is originated or amplified by people who will profit from that, particularly by attracting investors and grants.

Plus, it's simply a more-exciting future to imagine and discuss than "it'll be moderately useful in some specific applications but most our problems will still be around."

by yawpitchon 12/28/2024, 8:45 AM

People who want a messiah always see the messiah as imminent.

Of course the problem here being AGI would emphatically not be a/the messiah…

LLMs will not lead to a AGI. Now, LLMs may be sufficiently capable to have us, eventually, realize we’re not as generally intelligent or as capable as we think, but the realization of the absence of NGI does not an AGI make.

by solardevon 12/28/2024, 1:21 PM

I don't think it's necessarily that LLMs by themselves will lead to AGI, but that LLMs proved what is possible with enough compute and money. In a few short years, we went from "bots struggling with CAPTCHAs" to "bots easily passing the Turing test and able to fool most people". With that came bazillions in investments, jumpstarting an AI/ML arms race that may one day take us to AGI.