There is a lot of debate about when AGI will show up.

Don’t expect it to all come at once.

There are already a lot of things that GPT can do which I cannot, and in fact almost no one can.

For one, take this conversation, in which GPT-4 accurately knows the year in which my highschool was founded. This was the highschool that I spent 4 years at, and yet I did not know this, (why would I?). GPT might not be able to do this for every highschool in the world, but it can probably do most of the ones in America.

For two, it can write FAST. It might take me all day to come up with 10 decent dog jokes, and yet GPT can do it in a matter of seconds, see here. Albeit, they aren’t particularly funny. It is still super-human.

I am not a classicist, but I’ve put in a good amount of time and effort in learning about ancient Greece, particularly ahead of my trip there last summer. Yet, I’m not sure there is any topic of Greece which I know more about than GPT. Even of my home state, Arizona, I might know a bit more about a couple of niche topics, (although perhaps not), but GPT-4 can write a much better summary in a shorter amount of time, and might have much deeper knowledge altogether.

I take these as sufficient evidence that GPT has super-human knowledge of history.

Why does this imply AGI is here?

Its not here totally, but we shouldn’t expect it to come all in one shot. Which person is generally intelligent? Or super intelligent?

Almost all people possess above average capabilities in some respects but not others.

General Intelligences that have not arrived

As a professional programmer, I am willing to say on my own authority that GPT-4 is not yet as proficient in programming as the average developer. However, it does have more knowledge of more programming languages and development libraries than programmers, enough to earn the title of super-human.

It also can lack nuance. In this conversation, it brings up the Arizona Bark Scorpion in its first response. It brings it up as if it is an especially dangerous scorpion, but its really not. I believe it only brought it up because from its memory of me it knows I am from Arizona. This is enough of a suggestion for “Arizona Bark Scorpion” to jump into the conversation at first opportunity.

Mathematical skills are lacking, too. Plus, in trying to get it to achieve real world tasks, it often seems sub-human.

The point

Don’t keep looking to the future for AGI. Look at current AI systems for capabilities that match or pass humans, and think about what can be done as more of capabilities arrive.