For a comment this precise I'm surprised you've mistaken spiders for insects :) Anyway, I think that "if you gave us $10B then in ten years we have even odds of producing something as smart as a jumping spider" does make for less inspirational copy than "[we're] building artificial general intelligence with widely distributed economic benefits."
For a comment this precise I'm surprised you've mistaken spiders for insects :)
True. They're fellow arthropods, and have similar levels of nervous complexity. (BTW, are you by any chance confusing Tarantula Hawks for spiders?)
does make for less inspirational copy
The levels of inspiration in the copy and generalizing across the phylum Arthropoda aside, are you effectively conceding that we're close to AGI at insect levels?
> are you effectively conceding that we're close to AGI at insect levels?
By "we are not even close to achieving insect-level intelligence" I think I meant that what we have now is not close in intelligence (whatever that means) to insects. I don't know if we have a 50% of getting there in a decade, but I certainly wouldn't conclusively say that "we are not even close" to that. I mostly regret having chosen bikes rather than electric scooters for my original comment. I think that sounds funnier.
By "we are not even close to achieving insect-level intelligence" I think I meant that what we have now is not close in intelligence (whatever that means) to insects.
Some insects are pretty stupid! Fleas and ticks have a good and highly adapted repertoire of behaviors, but for the most part, as far as we know, most individual behaviors are fairly simple.
I mostly regret having chosen bikes rather than electric scooters for my original comment.
Here's where your analogy falls down. We don't even have working examples of a complete warp drive, or anything like it. On the other hand, we don't have any commercial airliner sized beamed-power electric jets, but we have smaller conceptual models of the involved devices which demonstrate the principles. This is why I'd say we're "close to close" to insect level intelligence. 10 years and $10B would get us to the flea level. I think that's "close" like airliner sized beamed-power electric jets is close.
