John Carmack and Rich Sutton partner to accelerate development of AGI

11 days ago : <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=37654653">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=37654653</a>, 82 comments

Their focus is long running digital intelligences that interact with their environment over long periods of time. I enjoyed reading The Alberta Plan when it was released earlier this year <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;2208.11173" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;2208.11173</a>

&gt; partnership to bring greater focus and urgency to the creation of artificial general intelligence (AGI)<p>Why is this urgent?

“Well, if AGI is gonna take over the world, better I develop it than someone else…”

I wish he would write a Commander Keen sequel instead.

&gt; Carmack and Sutton are deeply focused on developing a genuine AI prototype by 2030, including establishing, advancing and documenting AGI signs of life.<p>Seems a bit inappropriate to use the phrase &quot;signs of life&quot; here. In this context, it sounds like they&#x27;re bringing sentience into the conversation, which I don&#x27;t think Carmack is interested in contemplating or discussing.

There was an Infocom game called AMFV (A Mind Forever Voyaging) where the protagonist wakes up and realizes that he was just a simulation of a human being that has &quot;grown&quot; up into adulthood.<p>All the formative things that shaped him in life - kindergarten, your first high school romance - a breakup and parent squabbling you experienced.<p>Always thought that was a way to make an AGI.

I often wonder if the pursuit of AGI is going to require a greater focus on new hardware architecture.<p>All the sci-fi seems think this. I have seen Intel chips from the 80s that implemented neuron like behavior on a chip.<p>We are still waiting on a practical memristor.

Anyone know if they are focusing on LLMs or something else entirely?

Accelerate AGI So the hardware has finally become powerful enough to create the super mind.<p>Remember this: John Carmack is a hard working games developer. He is not done great philosopher. By chance, some Armageddon level shot has been put in his hands.<p>All I can say, please stop and think for a while Mr Carmack. You are playing with fire. Don’t kill us all, please.

Carmack is on it now! WHEW, great, we&#x27;ll have robot butlers within 5 years. Was looking dicey there for awhile!

The key issue is that Intelligence requires conceptual awareness of space time. Reinforcement &quot;learning&quot; is about statistics, very likely how our perception faculties work. But that is just the input to intelligence, not intelligence itself.

A complete departure from the topic but I have the same symptomatic awkward pose when standing for a photo as Carmack has in the article :)<p>But at the same time when you hold your hands back it can look even weirder! Where to put your hands in photos remains a mystery to me.

[dupe]<p>Two weeks old news with multiple threads?

Welp. The second shoe finally dropped.

It’s been 4 years of Carmack “getting into AI” and the only results so far are weekly HN posts

I like Carmack but is it really necessary to have a post about everytime he mentions AI (which is every week for the past year)? So far, his track record in AI research is non-existent.

John is nice to work with. Very numbers-focused. If you have a flaw in your logic, he’ll call you on it. And he’s looking for vice-versa —- nothing seems to make him happier than when you point out a flaw that he hadn’t considered.<p>I don’t know Rich, but John has said they work well together, and it’s exciting to see them collaborate. There are some unique ideas at Keen worth pursuing that I haven’t seen elsewhere. Looking forward to seeing more researchers join in the future.

Awkward typo - his name is Patrick Collison not Collision. Nice way to honor your investors