A bet about conscious machines
The estimable Robin Hanson and I are reviewing each other’s books. We disagree with each other about almost everything, which is great. I admire Robin’s ability to disagree strongly without a trace of animosity. The bet arose because of the following passage in my new book, The Economic Singularity: Geoff Hinton – the man whose team won the landmark 2012 ImageNet competition – went further. In May 2015 he said that he expects machines to demonstrate common sense within a decade. (Here is a report of Hinton saying that.) Robin is famously sceptical about the rapid progress of AI, thinking...