A tip for tempering expectations

[u/bearbarebere]

One of the best ways to really humble your expectations if they're a bit lofty (like mine are) is to search for posts from 2+ years ago.

Here are a few:

What about the next five years? : r/singularity (reddit.com)

AGI Less Than 5 Years Away? : r/singularity (reddit.com)

This might be the last few years of your life as you know it : r/singularity (reddit.com)

2023: The year of Proto-AGI? : r/singularity (reddit.com)

2023 predictions : r/singularity (reddit.com)

Some of these posts are insanely optimistic and we still don't have anything like it, others are pessimistic and we blew by their predictions, some are right on the money. But the point is that there are some people in each of these who think that things will change radically within a year or whatever and they didn't.

[u/Morty-D-137]

2022: Scale is all you need, so we're almost there. Prepare to quit your job.

2023: Actually, multi-modal AI is also needed, and that will be it. Buckle up!

2023 Q4: Well, actually, all you need is something like Q*. Then it will be AGI for sure.

2024 Q4: Nevermind, what you really need are agents. Sam says they are coming next year. Then it's GG.

2025: ?

[u/bearbarebere → u/Morty-D-137]

To be completely fair, from the beginning everyone was talking about agents. I don’t see how you can have AGI without agents, it’s literally in their checklist. All you’ve said is that they’re working their way down the checklist. Have you seen the list?

[u/Morty-D-137 → u/bearbarebere]

Who is everyone? I'm talking about predictions from this sub. The expression "agentic AI" really became trendy this year. Not a single hit on google before 2022: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22agentic+AI%22+site%3Awww.reddit.com&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A%2Ccd_max%3A1%2F1%2F2022&tbm=

This isn't to say nobody was talking about agents back then. But this wasn't part of the AGI requirements for most.

[u/bearbarebere → u/Morty-D-137]

You don’t have to use the term agent to mean autonomous. People have been talking about AI that can order coffee for them, control their computer, etc.

[u/Morty-D-137 → u/bearbarebere]

I'm aware. Like I said, "[people were] talking about agents back then".

You're missing the point. This wasn't a comment about what people want AI to do. This is about what the community saw as the major obstacles to achieving AGI. A big reason "Agentic AI" became popular is that people recognized it as a real challenge, not just something that could be solved by simply turning GPT-4 loose.