Misplaced concretenes

[timelets]

Most discussions about AI, especially AGI, suffer from what Whitehead would call the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness. That is, people assume that Intelligence is something concrete existing in Nature that can be easily pointed to and described. Instead, we have a broad range of definitions covering various bundles of human and/or computer capabilities.
By contrast, discussions about industrial robots, including drones and autonomous cars, are usually much more productive because their roles are well specified in terms of tasks and accomplishments.

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[dmm]

> discussions about industrial robots, including drones and autonomous cars

I think we are mostly talking about artificial software engineers and artificial mathematicians (and, therefore, about artificial AI researchers, and implications of those).

[timelets]

Yes business people and engineers talk about virtual engineers, etc. (Jeff Dean claimed that we'll have a virtual junior sw engineer within a year). By contrast, public speakers, including researchers, economists and entrepreneurs, talk about AGI. Some say that it's already here; others that it's not going to happen. Recently, Sergey Brin, who came back to Google, said that we are going to have AGI by 2030, while Demis Hassabis said definitely after 2030.