Connectionists: Geoff Hinton, Elon Musk, and a bet at garymarcus.substack.com

Thu Jun 9 16:42:29 EDT 2022

Geoff, I have done the equivalent of switching sides over here. Long ago, I was recruited by Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis to head academics for Singularity University and considered Elon Musk a friend of sorts. Now you see me teaming up with Gary to challenge Elon and the futurists who proclaim that AGI is almost here. 

It isn’t that I don’t believe that these models will evolve and do some things which seem amazing, it is because I have realized that Gary and others are right: “these systems aren’t stable or trustworthy; a crumbling house follows from a rotten foundation”. With all the hype that is being generated by people like Andreessen and Musk, the investments are going into wasteful things like crypto/NFTs and the imaginary Web3. We are being distracted from the problems that flawed AI data models have created with privacy and security — and inequity.   

In this piece I wrote for India’s Hindustan Times, for example, I talked for the first time about Tesla’s dangerous FSD: https://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/why-india-is-better-off-without-musk-and-tesla-101654787059810.html. By making unrealistic claims about the imminence of AGI, Elon is very skillfully changing the subject. The fact is that not only are the Tesla’s sensors inadequate, so are its AI models. The car will never have a safe FSD. And if Elon’s robots are as flawed as his car’s AI systems are, they will be killing their owners the moment they get shouted at. 

I have no doubt that in this decade, you will never trust an AI to look after your children or grandchildren. I would be surprised if anyone really believes that at least in the next two decades, computers will have any form of sentience or the stuff we saw in science fiction. 

Regards,

Vivek Wadhwa

Former Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School, Carnegie Mellon School of Engineering, and Emory University; Fellow at Stanford Law and UC-Berkeley; adjunct professor at Duke University and Carnegie Mellon University; and VP of Academics at Singularity University

Website: www.wadhwa.com <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/www.wadhwa.com/__;!!KzIVK9q-m3Ij!NoBI3uD3LNL_042u3EMr9kcFuF-cxu7yguX8fuZhj89uf2vTfFcpEPEuWu5ior3dQwk9yJjjvEIGWtt7yII$> , Twitter: @wadhwa <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/twitter.com/wadhwa__;!!KzIVK9q-m3Ij!NoBI3uD3LNL_042u3EMr9kcFuF-cxu7yguX8fuZhj89uf2vTfFcpEPEuWu5ior3dQwk9yJjjvEIGhcr07JY$> 

Author:  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/www.amazon.com/The-Immigrant-Exodus-Entrepreneurial-ebook/dp/B0098P9HKC/__;!!KzIVK9q-m3Ij!NoBI3uD3LNL_042u3EMr9kcFuF-cxu7yguX8fuZhj89uf2vTfFcpEPEuWu5ior3dQwk9yJjjvEIGawghaE4$> The Immigrant Exodus,  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LFVJT6E__;!!KzIVK9q-m3Ij!NoBI3uD3LNL_042u3EMr9kcFuF-cxu7yguX8fuZhj89uf2vTfFcpEPEuWu5ior3dQwk9yJjjvEIGAIwNNPc$> Innovating Women,  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.amazon.com/Your-Happiness-Was-Hacked-Brain/dp/1523095849__;!!KzIVK9q-m3Ij!NoBI3uD3LNL_042u3EMr9kcFuF-cxu7yguX8fuZhj89uf2vTfFcpEPEuWu5ior3dQwk9yJjjvEIGxG6UR7o$> Your Happiness Was Hacked,  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.amazon.com/gp/product/1626569711__;!!KzIVK9q-m3Ij!NoBI3uD3LNL_042u3EMr9kcFuF-cxu7yguX8fuZhj89uf2vTfFcpEPEuWu5ior3dQwk9yJjjvEIGeiWOflg$> The Driver in the Driverless Car and  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.amazon.com/Incremental-Exponential-Companies-Rethink-Innovation/dp/1523089563__;!!KzIVK9q-m3Ij!NoBI3uD3LNL_042u3EMr9kcFuF-cxu7yguX8fuZhj89uf2vTfFcpEPEuWu5ior3dQwk9yJjjvEIGPQB5Eyw$> From Incremental to Exponential: How Large Companies Can See the Future and Rethink Innovation

From: Geoffrey Hinton <geoffrey.hinton at gmail.com> 
Sent: Thursday, June 9, 2022 11:50 AM
To: Gary Marcus <gary.marcus at nyu.edu>
Cc: connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu; Vivek Wadhwa <vivek at wadhwa.com>
Subject: Re: Connectionists: Geoff Hinton, Elon Musk, and a bet at garymarcus.substack.com

If you make a bet, you need to be very clear about what counts as success and you need to assume the person who has to pay out will quibble.

You cannot have a real bet that includes phrases like:

"tell you accurately"

"reliably answer questions"

"competent cook"

"reliably construct"

A bet needs to have such clear criteria for whether it has been achieved or not that even Gary Marcus could not quibble.  

Geoff

On Thu, Jun 9, 2022 at 3:41 AM Gary Marcus <gary.marcus at nyu.edu <mailto:gary.marcus at nyu.edu> > wrote:

Dear Connectionists, and especially Geoff Hinton,

It has come to my attention that Geoff Hinton is looking for challenging targets. In a just-released episode of The Robot Brains podcast [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Otcau-C_Yc], he said 

“If any of the people who say [deep learning] is hitting a wall would just write down a list of the things it’s not going to be able to do then five years later, we’d be able to show we’d done them.”

Now, as it so happens, I (with the help of Ernie Davis) did just write down exactly such a list of things, last weekm and indeed offered Elon Musk a $100,000 bet along similar lines.

Precise details are here, towards the end of the essay: 

https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/dear-elon-musk-here-are-five-things <https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/dear-elon-musk-here-are-five-things?s=w> 

Five are specific milestones, in video and text comprehension, cooking, math, etc; the sixth is the proviso that for an intelligence to be deemed “general” (which is what Musk was discussing in a remark that prompted my proposal), it would need to solve a majority of the problems. We can probably all agree that narrow AI for any single problem on its own might be less interesting.

Although there is no word yet from Elon, Kevin Kelly offered to host the bet at LongNow.Org, and Metaculus.com has transformed the bet into 6 questions that the community can comment on.  Vivek Wadhwa, cc’d, quickly offered to double the bet, and several others followed suit;  the bet to Elon (should he choose to take it) currently stands at $500,000.

If you’d like in on the bet, Geoff, please let me know. 

More generally, I’d love to hear what the connectionists community thinks of six criteria I laid out (as well as the arguments at the top of the essay, as to why AGI might not be as imminent as Musk seems to think).

Cheers.

Gary Marcus

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