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We’ve built hardware capable of those things if remotely controlled. It’s the thinking bits that are hard.

Only to the extent of having specialized bespoke solutions. We have hardware to fly a plane, but that same hardware isn't able to throw a mortarboard in the air after receiving its degree, and the hardware that can do that isn't able to lactate for a young child.

General intelligence is easy compared to general physicality. And, of course, if you keep the hardware specialized to make its creation more tractable, what do you need general intelligence for? Special intelligence that matches the special hardware will work just as well.

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Retric a day ago | parent [-]

Flying an aircraft requires talking to air traffic control which existing systems can’t do. Though obviously not a huge issue when the aircraft already has radios, except all those FAA regulations apply to every single aircraft you’ve retrofitting.

The advantage of general intelligence is using a small set of hardware now lets you tackle a huge range of tasks or in the above aircraft types. We can mix speakers, eyes, and hands to do a vast array of tasks. Needing new hardware and software for every task very quickly becomes prohibitive.

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9rx 9 hours ago | parent [-]

The advantage of general intelligence is that it can fly you home to the nearest airport, drive you the last mile, and, once home, cook you supper. But for that you need the hardware to be equally general.

If you need to retrofit airplanes and in such a way that the hardware is specific to flying, no need for general intelligence. Special intelligence will work just as well. Multimodal AI isn't AGI.

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Retric 8 hours ago | parent [-]

No, the advantage of AGI isn’t being able to do all those physical things, the advantage of AGI is you don’t need to keep building new software for every task.

Let’s suppose you wanted to replace a pilot for a 747, now you need to be able fly, land, etc which we’re already capable of. However, actual job of a pilot goes well past just flying.

You also need to do the preflight such as verifying fuel is appropriately for the trip, check weather, alternate landing spots, preflight walk around the aircraft etc etc. It also needs to be able to keep up with any changing procedures as a special purpose softener you’re talking a multi billion dollar investment, or have an AGI run through the normal pilot training and certification process for a trivial fraction of those costs.

That’s the promise of AGI.

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9rx 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> the advantage of AGI is you don’t need to keep building new software for every task.

Even the human's brain seems to be 'built' for its body. You're moving into ASI realm if the software can configure itself for the body automatically.

> That’s the promise of AGI.

That's the promise of multimodal AI. AGI requires general ability – meaning basically able to do anything humans can – which requires a body as capable as a human's body.

	▲	Retric 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Human brains aren’t limited to the standard human body plan. People born with an extra finger have no issues operating that finger just as well as people with the normal complement of fingers. Animal experiments have pushed this quite far. If your AI has an issue because the robot has a different body plan, then no it’s not AGI. That doesn’t mean it needs to be able to watch every camera in a city at the same time, but you can use multiple AGI’s.