>This is a simple test for the moment that AI is able to make original contributions to our society: when can AI come up with a new thesis about numbers, and then build an original proof, something that can be published in the major, peer-reviewed math journals.
>Until AI can do that, we have to admit that it's not really aware or sentient or any of the other more ambitious things that have recently been claimed for it.
We have to admit no such thing, that is an absurdly high bar. The vast majority of humanity has not produced an original mathematical proof worthy of being published in a peer-reviewed math journal, and realistically it isn't possible for the vast majority of humanity to do so. Nevertheless, we are essentially all sentient/aware. "If it can't generate new and novel math that can pass peer review, it's not aware or sentient" is a moving of the goalposts so far and fast it should be giving you windburn.
The difference being, probably the vast majority of humans _could_ publish in a journal if they devoted their life to it 100%.
Additionally the AI does not get bored or frustrated, which is probably one of the biggest impediments (other than money) that most people would have to such an endeavour.
If the AI had to do this while also doing all the other things humans do at the same time and constrained to the power of a human brain, then yes it would be unrealistic.
>The difference being, probably the vast majority of humans _could_ publish in a journal if they devoted their life to it 100%.
I believe that, yes. That's why I said "realistically", because of course the vast majority of humans currently in existence actually cannot in a reasonable timeframe (keep in mind ChatGPT has been around for 8 months), no matter how much you incentivise them. And maybe if there were 7 billion AIs on the planet, 0.00174533469% of them could produce a publishable paper on mathematical theory throughout an average 60-80 years of life - I don't believe it, but we have nowhere near enough knowledge about current AI systems to say for sure right now.
My point isn't that an AI couldn't generate a novel mathematical proof - eventually I'm certain one could, and we should definitely work towards it. My point is that it is absolutely absurd to say that an AI isn't intelligent if it can't generate a novel mathematical proof, because if that standard was applied to humans it would mean 99.9982546653% of us aren't intelligent.
Yes but that's not the question either. Chatgpt can probably publish in a journal already. The question is whether it can make impactful work. This is very unclear if most people could do even if working on it 100%
So what if you cant either. You as a human at least possess the self-direction and innate will to direct your own actions and thoughts in some direction. Does AI? No it doesn't. It literally does nothing unless directed by human-set parameters into doing so. For now, regardless of technical abilities, this makes AI far from anything that can easily be defined as sentient.
We evolved visual and hand dexterity for considerably more than two millions years (more like hundreds of millions, I don't care to go find out when hands first evolved but the neural crest was 550 million years ago), and we need many, many more than "only few examples" to be able to draw hands, let alone a sentence. This is something you could only possibly say if you have never tried to draw a realistic hand. There is a reason that long before AI image generation was publicly talked about, many artists joked all the time about how they could draw everything except hands correctly. Hands are particularly difficult to draw. If anything, it is genuinely interesting and maybe worthy of research as to why hands are so hard for us to draw and why they are so hard for these DL networks to draw, and if the reasons are related.
>Until AI can do that, we have to admit that it's not really aware or sentient or any of the other more ambitious things that have recently been claimed for it.
We have to admit no such thing, that is an absurdly high bar. The vast majority of humanity has not produced an original mathematical proof worthy of being published in a peer-reviewed math journal, and realistically it isn't possible for the vast majority of humanity to do so. Nevertheless, we are essentially all sentient/aware. "If it can't generate new and novel math that can pass peer review, it's not aware or sentient" is a moving of the goalposts so far and fast it should be giving you windburn.