That’s not an argument, it’s appeal to authority. If those scientists have arguments or evidence to back up their beliefs, I’m all ears. “Top scientists” working on nuclear fusion have been saying it’s possible and close for years.
Um, I'm sorry to say, but nuclear fusion is possible or we wouldn't exist. Otherwise the universe would be made out of mostly hydrogen and a little helium. I mean Bikini Atoll has a 2 mile wide hole in it because of fusion weapons. And just a few months ago we shot some lasers at a deuterium pellet and got more energy out of it than we put in (caveats apply). There is movement towards a goal.
Honestly what you are arguing at about at this time is timelines, not ability. I mean if want to say that faster than light travel isn't going to happen, or we're never going to have wormholes, or string theory isn't going to produce anything useful I'll be right there beside you. But when something already exists (human intelligence) and humanity is pouring billions in time and effort into reproducing it, I'm on humanities side of succeeding.
Fair points. Counter-argument: Even if we grant that it's possible for humans to create AGI that is similar to a human level, because human intelligence exists, that doesn't necessarily imply that superintelligence is possible (i.e. recursive learning / singularity / the native interfacing with gigabits of data and other things proposed in these threads), since we do not currently know if that exists (and we do not even understand intelligence or consciousness well enough to just say "create intelligence at a human level and then make it go 100x").
But I suppose arguing about timelines is a good way to frame it. I suppose since we've mapped all 300 neurons of a nematode and still have no clue how to recreate its processing artificially I'm pretty skeptical we're anywhere close to doing the same at a level of billions. But I've been wrong...
Why is an appeal to authority bad in a context of non experts? I mean would I dispute the space time curvature with friends? No but if I did someone would point out hey, all physicists think so and so. Not atop physicist? Not great to oppose this opinion. The strange thing with AI is that everybody has an opinion because they think it's a soft is.subjective science, easy to predict because of sci-fi novels.
