It's not the comment which is illogical, it's your (mis)interpretation of it. What I (and seemingly others) took it to mean is basically could an LLM do Einstein's job? Could it weave together all those loose threads into a coherent new way of understanding the physical world? If so, AGI can't be far behind.

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feanaro 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This alone still wouldn't be a clear demonstration that AGI is around the corner. It's quite possible a LLM could've done Einstein's job, if Einstein's job was truly just synthesising already available information into a coherent new whole. (I couldn't say, I don't know enough of the physics landscape of the day to claim either way.)

It's still unclear whether this process could be merely continued, seeded only with new physical data, in order to keep progressing beyond that point, "forever", or at least for as long as we imagine humans will continue to go on making scientific progress.

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pegasus 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Einstein is chosen in such contexts because he's the paradigmatic paradigm-shifter. Basically, what you're saying is: "I don't know enough history of science to confirm this incredibly high opinion on Einstein's achievements. It could just be that everyone's been wrong about him, and if I'd really get down and dirty, and learn the facts at hand, I might even prove it." Einstein is chosen to avoid exactly this kind of nit-picking.

	▲	Shorel 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		They can also choose Euler or Gauss. These two are so above everyone else in the mathematical world that most people would struggle for weeks or even months to understand something they did in a couple of minutes. There's no "get down and dirty" shortcut with them =)
	▲	feanaro 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		No, by saying this, I am not downplaying Einstein's sizeable achievements nor trying to imply everyone was wrong about him. His was an impressive breadth of knowledge and mathematical prowess and there's no denying this. However, what I'm saying is not mere nitpicking either. It is precisely because of my belief in Einstein's extraordinary abilities that I find it unconvincing that an LLM being able to recombine the extant written physics-related building blocks of 1900, with its practically infinite reading speed, necessarily demonstrates comparable capabilities to Einstein. The essence of the question is this: would Einstein, having been granted eternal youth and a neverending source of data on physical phenomena, be able to innovate forever? Would an LLM? My position is that even if an LLM is able to synthesise special relativity given 1900 knowledge, this doesn't necessarily mean that a positive answer to the first question implies a positive answer to the second.

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techno_tsar 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This does make me think about Kuhn's concept of scientific revolutions and paradigms, and that paradigms are incommensurate with one another. Since new paradigms can't be proven or disproven by the rules of the old paradigm, if an LLM could independently discover paradigm shifts similar to moving from Newtonian gravity to general relativity, then we have empirical evidence of an LLM performing a feature of general intelligence.

However, you could also argue that it's actually empirical evidence that general relativity and 19th century physics wasn't truly a paradigm shift -- you could have 'derived' it from previous data -- that the LLM has actually proven something about structurally similarities between those paradigms, not that it's demonstrating general intelligence...

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ctoth 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I mean, "the pieces were already there" is true of everything? Einstein was synthesizing existing math and existing data is your point right?

But the whole question is whether or not something can do that synthesis!

And the "anyone who read all the right papers" thing - nobody actually reads all the papers. That's the bottleneck. LLMs don't have it. They will continue to not have it. Humans will continue to not be able to read faster than LLMs.

Even me, using a speech synthesizer at ~700 WPM.

	▲	feanaro 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> I mean, "the pieces were already there" is true of everything? Einstein was synthesizing existing math and existing data is your point right? If it's true of everything, then surely having an LLM work iteratively on the pieces, along with being provided additional physical data, will lead to the discovery of everything? If the answer is "no", then surely something is still missing. > And the "anyone who read all the right papers" thing - nobody actually reads all the papers. That's the bottleneck. LLMs don't have it. They will continue to not have it. Humans will continue to not be able to read faster than LLMs. I agree with this. This is a definitive advantage of LLMs.

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8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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f0ti 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Einstein is not AGI, and neither the other way around.

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9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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andai 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

AGI is human level intelligence, and the minimum bar is Einstein?

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pegasus 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Who said anything of a minimum bar? "If so", not "Only if so".

	▲	andy12_ 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think the problem is the formulation "If so, AGI can't be far behind". I think that if a model were advanced enough such that it could do Einstein's job, that's it; that's AGI. Would it be ASI? Not necessarily, but that's another matter.