
Why We Can't Solve Big Problems - andrewl
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/429690/why-we-cant-solve-big-problems/
======
pron
I'd like to offer one more partial cause. It is certainly incomplete and
possibly simplistic, but let's put it out there:

Big-idea technological innovation has been led for years by the US, and for
some time by the USSR as well. But the Soviet Union is gone, and there may be
a cultural shift in America: going at it alone and distrust of government. The
libertarian streak that has long been present in American culture seems to be
taking hold of more and more people. Even Democrats seem to have a distrust of
government, and some even partially accept right-wing axioms about the
benefits of small government and spending cuts. But some undertakings are
simply too big for private corporations, and require government funding and
control. Only Americans increasingly distrust the gov't.

This sentiment is not bad necessarily, but it's becoming pervasive and might
be spreading beyond just distrust of government. Americans (or, rather, well-
to-do Americans, or those born to the right parents in the right
neighborhoods) don't want to be a small cog in a big machine. They prefer
going at it alone, or in a small team and encourage individual expression.

So this is not wrong, and it certainly doesn't apply to everyone everywhere,
but it might just be one more reason in the decline of huge undertakings, that
might require collaboration on a national or international scale, where
talented people must be content to contribute their small part to a very large
and non-individual expression.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I don't think this is right. We have a bigger government than we did
historically, and the past few years have led to massive increases in the size
of the government.

Rather, there seems to be a change in the _role_ of the government. At one
point we wanted the government to engage in big projects. Now we just want the
government to redistribute wealth and engage in irrelevant expressive acts
(yay/nay gay marriage, faith based blah blah, forcing christian hospitals to
pay for birth control).

But this tends to mirror changes in the private sector as well, so I imagine
it's just a cultural shift rather than something government related.

~~~
pron
> Now we just want the government to redistribute wealth and engage in
> irrelevant expressive acts

Whether or not these things are irrelevant is a personal political judgement,
right? And what is "distribution of wealth" for one might be an investment in
society or demand-side economics for another.

But your comment precisely demonstrates this lack of trust in government, or,
the way you put it, in your fellow citizens.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_And what is "distribution of wealth" for one might be an investment in
society or demand-side economics for another._

It's not a moon shot, nuclear energy, the interstate highway system, or
anything of the sort the article is actually discussing.

------
Gravityloss
As an amateur space historian, I view that the Apollo project is widely
misunderstood by most people.

It was basically a stunt: create something as quickly as possible with money
as no object. It is extremely obvious in hindsight that the capabilities and
solutions it created were not directly sustainable or efficient in the long
term.

We should not clamor for some similar projects or similar technical solutions,
just "because Apollo did it".

Instead we should objectively strive for reliable, flexible and affordable
spacefaring.

Some of the project practices and technologies that Apollo used might be good
for spacefaring unchanged as they were, some might serve as basis that needs
development and others are negative examples.

We just shouldn't say "look they went to the moon with solution X" as the only
justification for solution X. Solution X could be for example building a
single huge rocket.

~~~
kamaal
But they did it, and guess what- 4 decades later no one gives a damn about the
money spent because adjusted to inflation and comparative to other pointless
spending(wars) its the cost of chicken feed.

The whole point is stunt or other wise they achieved something through brute
force. The point is we aren't even _attempting_ a brute force solution.

~~~
Gravityloss
But why _should we_ try brute force solutions? I have much bigger dreams than
12 guys walking on the moon.

Routine daily commercial flights to orbit with reusable vehicles that fly many
times in one week, NEO exploration, in situ resource usage. One day many of
the people who comment on Hacker news can have visited space, some may even
live and work there.

That requires longer and more many sided and organic development than a brute
force government crash program. That just would not be good resource usage.

------
droithomme
Arg this article is infuriating. His conclusion is that only government taking
the initiative will fix things: "political leaders and the public must care to
solve a problem".

He mentions SpaceX, but only in the context that its founder is one of the
members of Founders Fund. Not a word about SpaceX building ships to go to
Mars. Because that doesn't fit the narrative that only government can solve
problems.

A big problem now is energy. The solution is nuclear. Right now in the US
government and the public's main role in nuclear is to ban the solution, which
is what has created the problem. In France though the public and government
didn't ban the solution to the problem and so 78.8% of their electricity comes
from nuclear, without any disasters in over 30 years of operation, and a
nationwide system of incredibly cheap high speed electric trains powered by
this network.

~~~
lutorm
SpaceX doesn't really build rockets to go to Mars... It might, one day, but
it's a provider of rockets, not a private space exploration venture. Someone's
going to need to buy that Mars launch off of them for that to happen.

~~~
sixbrx
Not really, they just need to keep selling satellite launches around Earth to
help pay for the eventual Mars shot. Sometimes companies do stuff because they
or their founders just want to. Musk has made no secret that he plans to walk
on Mars.

------
roc
> _"if we once did big things but do so no longer, then what changed?"_

Our definition of "big", I think. I can't be sure because the article leaves
it so loosely defined that one could cherry pick data to suit their mood.

Is no space project acceptably "big" simply because it doesn't include humans
or habitats? We've been to Mars a few times lately, by robot. We're going to
earth orbit far more efficiently these days. We're launching satellites at a
furious clip. And for this, even though poor nations languish without proper
electricity, they do have cell phones. Not to downplay the problems that
remain, but that one seems "big" to me; at least worth mentioning.

To say nothing of computer vision. Processing power advancements have turned
this long-suffering field into something of a white-hot ball of promise
lately. The applications being developed will be at least as transformative as
anything the automobile delivered.

Is this not "big" because the applications will first be delivered to wealthy
nations, because some of them look like "toys", or because it lacks the old-
school wonder of a big-ass rocket launch? I have no idea from the article; I
can only infer the author disqualifies it by its complete omission.

And the author is similarly imprecise on who "we" even are. After identifying
many of the problems they consider "big" as primarily international political
problems, in many cases a result of international poverty, they then point
fingers at the US political situation [1] when looking for answers.

Is it reasonable to expect that the national feeling that fed support for a
US-centric space program is _lacking_ because there isn't similar contemporary
support for solving problems overseas? Not that the US couldn't do more on
some of those problems [2]. But aside from the military removal of despots,
the US has no real history of possessing the national will -- or even the
capability -- to solve political and poverty problems overseas.

Even if we had that Cold War-era national spirit today, I'm not sure it
logically follows that it would unite behind e.g. a massive
political/research/development effort to light Africa.

[1] A mess no doubt. And one doing grievous harm to our national R&D.

[2] We could even "do more" by doing less in some cases: stopping support for
programs that aren't helping, but are instead warping markets and political
structures.

~~~
ArbitraryLimits
> The applications being developed will be at least as transformative as
> anything the automobile delivered.

Are you serious? I'm having a hard time seeing a disruptive innovation in CV
anywhere.

~~~
roc
Self-operating vehicles have a huge potential to upset travel and shipping and
blur the distinction between transit and last-mile.

To say nothing of the generic bipedal utility robot. CV is the big roadblock
there. [1]

No, these things aren't going to happen tomorrow. But they have a fair chance
of being delivered before we could actually put a human on Mars or eradicate
poverty in Africa, even if massive societal projects were undertaken with
those goals in mind.

And, conveniently, CV won't require those massive societal projects. It'll get
them, eventually. To enable the really cool stuff. [2] Sort of like cars
changed everything even before we had a massive highway system that unleashed
further potential.

[1] Though power density is a big challenge, I don't think anyone's going to
mind if version 1 of their autonomous maid/handyman only works in one-hour
bursts. Not so long as it can actually _do_ the housework. If someone's
keeping up with things day-in, day-out, it's rare that more than an hour or
two's-worth of work needs to be done in a day.

[2] e.g. Going from self-driving cars and trucks to self-driving transport
pods that autonomously link to tracks and ad-hoc caravans for long-distance
high-speed travel, then de-link and queue for self-operating cranes to be load
them onto self-piloting ships to deliver them to foreign ports where they
operate the same dance in reverse.

~~~
mcguire
We already have "self-driving cars", as well as "self-driving transport pods"
that can do all of the things that you describe. Assuming, that is, that you
widen the definition of "self-driving" to include having a human being at the
steering wheel.

Self-driving cars would make my commute _wonderful_ , but won't be materially
different than having a good bus route. The only real difference I can see
autonomous vehicles making is to remove a certain class of jobs and creating
another class of jobs.

Likewise, you could hire a "generic bipedal utility robot" pretty easily
today. It's expensive, but that's mostly a political problem. (For the humor-
impaired, that last clause was a joke.)

~~~
roc
> _"Self-driving cars ... won't be materially different than having a good bus
> route."_

By this definition a cell phone is not materially different than having a
personal land-line available regardless of where you live, work, eat, play,
etc. That seems like a fairly silly thing to say when you compare the two. One
because it points out the absurdity of the notion of perfect coverage/perfect
availability of a 'good bus route' and two because there's obviously much more
you can do with a cell phone _because_ it's everywhere, that not even a wired
phone at every destination could achieve. (e.g. the entirety of pocket
computing)

Similarly, you see no societal advance in bringing something only the very
wealthy can afford (personal servants) to the middle class? (initially, and
then trending down with commoditization)

That's nearly the definition of massive social change: making the quality of
life of royalty affordable to the middle class.

------
kds
Big problems - sometimes before even to be formulated and asked - require big
fundamental and applicative science research programmes and the respective
advancement.

These are not something to be expected from venture capital. They are
something resulting from deliberate state scientific and industrial policy,
longterm goals, and adequate funding.

Examples from 1950s-1970s: DARPA/USA, and the resp. space and rocketry
programmes in the former USSR.

Private capital - be it venture or not - comes later (and this is not a bad
thing) when the new technologies are relatively well understood , "tameable",
and can be applied to mass human consumers' or corporate needs (perceived or
not, new or old) yet to be satisfied.

Private capital doesn't like fundamental scientific research risks - even in
the pharmacy industry. It tries to bear mostly the market-related and
implementational risks.

A thought experiment: Think on what funds and in what conditions happened the
development of packet switching, TCP/IP protocols suite, HTTP, (examples of
fundamental breakthrough). Then think the same about Facebook, for example.

My point summarized => States/Governments shouldn't worry about
entrepreneurship programmes, clusters, tech-business climat, etc.

If adequate funding is provided for breakthrough scientific research and to
the universities in general (so there are also the high-quality scientists to
do it), breakthrough technology business solving big problems will happen
inevitably.

~~~
MordinSolus
On the pharmaceutical industry: part of the problem is the government and the
enormous number of regulations and necessary steps to bring a drug (which
still could harm people regardless of how many trials are done) to market. As
such, while someone may want to research some new but unproven idea, the time
and cost and risk involved would be far too great as a result of regulations.

I do agree with your point though. The government should invest in research,
not companies.

------
loup-vaillant
_[…] On a larger scale, the Council inaugurated a set of projects ambitious
both in scope and name, intended to be Manhattan Projects for a new age:
Project Eden sought clinical immortality, Project Janus sought FTL travel, and
Project Icarus sought to use solar satellites to harvest the light of the sun,
making energy not just cheap, but free. With these accomplishments, the
Council sought to win eternal loyalty from its citizenry._

<http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7406866/15/To-the-Stars>

Now we're talking grandiose programs that could very well have the support of
the population. (Even project Eden: give people actual hope of escaping Death,
and most will cease to object.) If a governance actually successfully triggers
such accomplishments, I'm sure going to like it more.

Now if we stay down to earth, Friendly AI is probably the best bet: it looks
less impossible, and would have much more impact.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
You another _Methods of Rationality_ reader?

~~~
loup-vaillant
Actually, I studied the conspiracy's¹ Scrolls² before reading it, but… yeah.

[1] <http://lesswrong.com/>

[2] <http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences>

------
parfe
www.technologyreview.com uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is only valid for the following names: acquia-sites.com ,
victory.mittromney.com , secure.mittromney.com , www.mittromney.com ,
mittromney.com , m.mittromney.com , secure.gop.com , collab.net ,
www.collab.net , bentley.edu , www.bentley.edu , acuvue.ca , www.acuvue.ca ,
acuvue.com , www.acuvue.com , barnard.edu , www.barnard.edu ,
api.mittromney.com , www.babymed.com , secureforms.bentley.edu ,
www.housingwire.com , securefroms.bentley.edu , www.utsystem.edu ,
theoverflow.com , www.theoverflow.com , acuvueprofessional.com ,
www.acuvueprofessional.com , romneyvictory.com , www.romneyvictory.com ,
americascomebackteam.com , www.americascomebackteam.com ,
www.jnjvisioncare.com , jnjvisioncare.com , ssl.marketplace.org ,
veterancentral.com , www.mywell-being.com , www.givingcomfort.org ,
givingcomfort.org , www.givingcomfort.com , givingcomfort.com

(Error code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain)

\-----

Definitely one of the stranger SSL issues I've had. MittRomney.com?

~~~
ck2
May be some kind of edge cache that has it's own certs for sites it mirrors?

Either that or a lazy developer reusing the ssl cert instead of generating a
new one.

------
jules
Going to Mars is currently not a good use of resources. It's like spending
billions to travel to the middle of the Sahara. Sure, there will be
technologies invented as a side effect, but that will also be the case if we
spend those resources on something that's also directly useful (like solving
the energy problem, quantum computing, self sufficient robots, AI, etc.).
Arguably, going to the moon wasn't a good use of resources either.

~~~
debacle
Removing the greatest current single point of failure for human existence
isn't a good use of resources?

~~~
zerostar07
It's not a single point. We could alternatively synthesize humans or modify
humans to survive apocalyptic conditions. Or build sustainable low orbit
colonies. Or transfer our knowledge to artificial intelligent agents. Or
simply fix the planet so it doesn't become a point of failure.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
All of the above except the last one are much harder to do than kickstarting a
Mars colony.

The last one is downright impossible.

~~~
zerostar07
We already have a colony in low earth orbit. Also, by colonizing mars we will
only have 2 points of failure.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _We already have a colony in low earth orbit._

It's a little flying shack, not a "colony". Anyway, it's not self-sustainable,
which is the main issue.

> _Also, by colonizing mars we will only have 2 points of failure._

It appears that you've never done backups.

------
digeridoo
Much sits in the way between invention and nirvana. We have to face the fact
that earth is over-crowded with global infrastructure, rules, economic
barriers, borders, financial systems, controlled by a small number of distant,
territorial governments. This prevents us from moving forward in some of the
areas most critical to human civilization, such as transportation and energy.

What I would really like to see is a revolution in governance. There is a
tremendous mistake in current thinking that global problems require global
solutions. As a result, government and economic power is moving in the wrong
direction. Today's global problems were caused locally, by every car, every
meter of asphalt, every gram of sugar, every cheap t-shirt, every plastic bag,
every poor mortgage, etc. These problems require local solutions.

National borders are enormous societal barriers. If one country has better
governance than another, only a small percentage of people will consider
moving, if even allowed. As a result, better national policy is slow to
attract, slow to spread, slow to evolve, and limited in its effectiveness.

Instead of empowering national or supra-national governments in a quest for
global solutions, we should face global problems at their root and empower the
central pillar of human civilization in the 21st century: the city.

The human economy has the remarkable characteristic that greater population
density and better lives can go hand in hand. If great technologists, artists,
teachers, scientists, merchants, politicians, industrialists, and laborers
come together, that's when great things happen. That's when ideas start to
take root and become reality.

National governance and poor economic policy is squeezing the city into a
menial role. They do not have the economic power or independence to make
different rules or undertake great projects. The benefits of the existing
population density is the only thing that still makes cities like New York,
San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles attractive. A trip to Dubai,
Singapore, Macau, or Hong Kong will give you a glimpse of what cities can do
once empowered, even when relatively isolated. Imagine a nation of cities
trying to out-class each other and trying to attract and keep their citizens.

------
mercuryrising
We no longer have leaders with the vision to collaborate on a level large
enough to impress scientists today.

Going to the moon - everyone can see the moon, it's a very achievable goal, we
put a person on that big rock up there. It's easy to understand, but
challenging enough that we still marvel at it. This was fueled by a desire to
win against our competitors. The competition against another superpower
created the desire to win. Net benefit to humanity: A cool line to write on a
resume.

Nuclear fusion (not the best example, as we have stuff like NREL, but it will
work) - a little bit more challenging. Closest example: We made a sun right
here! It's much more difficult to get people to understand the impact that
nuclear fusion would have. And, it has the 'nuclear' word attached to it.
Politicians don't understand it (and wouldn't get any money from it). The
general population doesn't care about it, because to them, the outlet will
always be magical. Net benefit to humanity: The possibility to reverse global
warming, unlimited clean water, free power, and solving a 'real' problem.

This makes me think of the superconducting super collider[1]. I know we still
do amazing science and amazing things, but we choose to do them in the
military, behind closed doors for the benefit of ourselves, rather than the
benefit of humanity.

The 'golden ages' of history have generally occurred when society turned
towards mathematicians, engineers, and scientists and basically said 'we don't
know what you're doing, but we know it's important'. The trouble today is that
everyone has an equal say on all issues (by having one vote, you are mapping a
column of varying stances into one single value), regardless of how much they
understand what they're talking about.

It makes me kind of wonder why an angel wouldn't come in and just fund some of
the projects the government should be funding.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider>

------
marknutter
Going to the moon was not a "big problem". It was an admirable goal, and it
captured the imagination of the world, but having not visited the moon wasn't
a "problem" for the U.S. or any other country.

~~~
potkor
Definition of PROBLEM

1 a : a question raised for inquiry, consideration, or solution b : a
proposition in mathematics or physics stating something to be done

[other meanings elided]

------
khitchdee
To solve larger problems, you need to strategize over longer periods of time.
As our attention spans are getting shorter, so is our longer term corporate
focus. Look at Intel as an example of an established corporate player of over
40 years -- probably amongst the oldest in the high tech industry. Most of
their energy right now is consumed in defining a strategy for supplying chips
to the mobile sector. This, when they are the established leader on PC chips.
If such a large and old corporation is not impervious to market pressures,
where's all the industry's momentum going?

------
batgaijin
I think the government needs to start creating fiefdoms that implement
redundant services, a la Amazon. I think that is an amazing policy for large
organizations when predicting future technological improvements is out of
consideration. Use whatever technology you want and any architecture as long
as you follow blah basic tenets.

No bureaucracy, a simple API to be responsible for, and the ability to subsume
any patented/copyrighted material ;)

<http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/sovimm.htm>

------
sopooneo
Can someone clue me in. "They brought back little—841 pounds of old rocks,
Aldrin's smuggled aesthetic bliss". What is meant by "aesthetic bliss"? Is
that a reference to something?

~~~
mcguire
109:43:16 Aldrin: Beautiful view!

109:43:18 Armstrong: Isn't that something! Magnificent sight out here.

109:43:24 Aldrin: Magnificent desolation. (Long Pause)

\-- <http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.step.html>

~~~
sopooneo
Thank you. So during that long pause Aldrin was soaking up the scenery and
thereby gaining "aesthetic bliss"? If that is the case, "smuggled" just seems
a strange word choice. If that's not it, I guess I'm just being dense because
I don't get it.

~~~
jpontin
I really just meant: that aesthetic bliss was a fairly unlikely emotion for an
Air Force pilot and MIT-trained PhD in astronautics to bring aboard the Lunar
Module and bring out on the surface of the Moon. Hence, "smuggled".

------
EricDeb
I would love to see more government funded research. There are so many
problems that, if tackled via the unregulated private sector, have misaligned
incentives.

------
namank
Because back then 'big' used to mean engineering advances. Now it means
people-oriented/social/feel-good advances.

~~~
freyr
Now 'big' means $1B. Whatever cashes out.

------
jackfoxy
Might be a good article, but that font hurts my eyes.

------
InclinedPlane
We still do, but we're no longer in an existential war with a major world
power so we tend to avoid blank-check crash-development programs.

Let me take a moment here to debunk the concept that the Apollo program was
such a good thing. I love the Apollo program, I think it was a marvelous thing
and a remarkable achievement. It remains deeply inspirational. But it was
flawed. Deeply, deeply flawed. It was a war-time stunt more than anything. It
expended vast amounts of resources for very little practical benefit, even on
a basic "blue sky" research level. At the end of Apollo we had spent somewhere
around a hundred billion dollars (in today's money) and yet we were little
closer to the moon than before. It still cost us a tremendous billion dollars
a passenger or more to put a man on the moon for at most a few days. Because
Apollo was a race. We didn't build infrastructure, we didn't build systems
that made spaceflight easier. And then afterward when we attempted to build
infrastructure with the Shuttle and the ISS we screwed up so badly that it
ended up being even more expensive to get to LEO than it had been to get to
the Moon with Apollo. We spent a quarter of a trillion dollars building the
ISS and it hasn't provided as much benefit toward exploring or colonizing the
solar system as you'd expect spending that much money should.

The idea that we need big government projects to solve "big" problems is part
of the problem. What we need is merely basic research and sound engineering.

As it turns out, we are starting to solve big problems. It's happening right
under our noses. In space exploration SpaceX is rapidly leading the way to a
new renaissance of commercial spaceflight and exploration (both manned and
unmanned). They have already built the most cost effective launch vehicle in
existence and are in the midst of building a reusable launch vehicle, a heavy
lift launcher, and a super heavy lift launcher that will dwarf the Saturn V.
All of which should facilitate the creation of a great deal of industrial
infrastructure in Earth orbit which will reduce the barrier to exploration of
the solar system.

Let's look at other projects which could be considered "big problems" or
engineering marvels. In many cases it's been a matter of engineering marvels
becoming commonplace. Enormous bridges, tunnels, transoceanic cables, etc. all
of these things are no longer marvels they are just ordinary engineering. The
channel tunnel was a tremendous engineering marvel, but today it has become
just an accepted matter of engineering, and many similarly audacious tunnel
projects have been completed since, to relatively minor fanfare. The same goes
for bridges. And today there is always at least one transoceanic fiber optical
cable in the midst of being laid down.

Meanwhile, let's look at the big problems of our age, such as cancer, disease,
poverty. In the last half century several countries have pulled themselves out
of poverty and become developed countries (South Korea, Taiwan, etc.) And
several other countries are on the same path. A smaller percentage of the
world is in poverty today than throughout history. Several types of cancer
today have 80-90% or higher average survival rates. Major diseases (smallpox,
rinderpest) have been eradicated. And major advances against diseases such as
malaria and AIDS are being made by the day. In some cases due to extensive
amounts of resources being brought to bear and in other cases merely due to
the ordinary workings of trade and industry.

There are many big problems that remain unsolved, of course, but we should not
wallow in the mistaken notion that we are any less capable of tackling such
problems or that we need to mobilize heaven and Earth in order to make
progress.

~~~
kamaal
>>But it was flawed. Deeply, deeply flawed.

I will take bad solution over no solutions on an given day.

~~~
draegtun
As they say in chess... _A bad plan is better than no plan at all_

------
marshallp
Big problems are quite easily solvable if more X prize and darpa challenges
were promoted.

Some big problems easily solvable today

\- Create artificial general intelligence

\- Create an immortal mice using focused ultrasound technologies (non-invasive
surgery and localized drug delivery)

\- flying cars (drones) including air traffic control for everyone on earth (+
cargo drones, so 1 trillion air vehicles or more)

(That's in addition to the important prizes already like x tricorder and darpa
humanoid)

Up the prize money to $1 billion each (that's nothing compared to the
bailouts) and you'll see all of the above done within 1 year, they really
aren't difficult if you put a little thought to it. There's more than enough
money and the technological pieces are in place. It just requires some bold
thinking.

No one holds people to account for opportunity costs. The robocar challenge
showed that robocars were possible. Governments and car companies should be
held to account to account (sued in court) for not working on it sooner. That
delay is millions of deaths. The same is true for other techs as mentioned
above. Some economic indicators need to be put in place for tech development
that isn't being done (opportunity cost accounting).

~~~
arethuza
I don't think I'd regard "artifical general intelligence" as "easily solvable"
- unless I've missed some developments in the field I don't think we are much
closer to understanding how to engineer a general human-level intelligence
than we were 20 or 30 years ago.

~~~
marshallp
Machine learning has cracked any problem put in it's path. AI hasn't been done
yet because no one's actually tried. There's the Loebner Prize but it's too
easy (needs to be multi-month and with difficult challenges like write an
essay or computer program) and there's no heavyweight turing tests with
heavyweight teams (in the ballpark "heavweightness" are search engines and ibm
watson).

~~~
arethuza
"AI hasn't been done yet because no one's actually tried."

Researchers have been trying to create some kind of framework for general
intelligence since the 1950s with multiple governments (notably the US, EU and
Japanese) throwing billions at it, with relatively little results - resulting
in things like the great AI Winter.

We have lots of clever focused systems now that are made feasible by the
enormous capacity of modern hardware, but I'm not convinced that we have made
much fundamental progress on real human level general intelligence.

Note that I _do_ think that general AI is possible - it's what motivated me to
get postgrad AI research, I just think that it is a long way off. YMMV.

~~~
marshallp
Yeah, but they haven't put it in the framework of an actual benchmarked test
like machine learning problems. They futzed around with prolog and other stuff
rather than have any kind of metrics.

~~~
loup-vaillant
You know, I hope you're dead wrong here. Because unless its generality somehow
stops at AI research, _or_ we somehow find a way to guarantee it will do what
we ultimately want…

 _The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of
atoms which it can use for something else._

Eliezer Yudkowsky

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andyl
Part of the issue IMHO is that we need a big enemy to tackle big projects.
ALCAN highway - 1800 miles long - done in 9 months during WW2. MoonShot - done
in 9 years during the cold war. Big enemies unify the people.

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wissler
The reason we don't achieve lofty visions is that those who would pursue them
are being smothered by nationalism. It is ironic that the Apollo mission
success is being held out as the ideal (as it always is) because its success
is what heralded this crushing nationalism to be brought down upon all our
heads.

But I know, no one wants to hear this. That's because they're nationalists.
All they can see is nationalist solutions to problems, and since that IS the
problem, nothing will change.

