I find the distinction between AGI and ASI to be a red herring. In my mind, we humans already have enough intelligence to basically solve any problem given enough time and a 'scratch pad'. It's sort of like Turing-completeness but for intelligence.
Saying that a computer exhibits artificial-SUPER-intelligence feels a little like saying that one universal Turing machine is more expressive than another universal Turing machine. The thing that sets the two Turing machines apart is not how expressive they are but how quickly and efficiently they can arrive at the given output.
It's hard for me to imagine a task that ASI could complete which a human with enough time and determination couldn't also complete, although I can imagine such tasks for dogs which don't exhibit the same level of intelligence as humans. Maybe I'm too human-centric and naive. Maybe there are other tasks out there that are beyond human intelligence even given infinite time.
If, however, my view of intelligence is correct, then the distinction between ASI and AGI is illusory, and the real distinction that we would see between systems is just their speed, efficiency, determination, etc.
In my mind, once we achieve AGI, we immediately have ASI: just run that AGI on a faster computer, across many nodes, etc. Instead of having humans solve quantum gravity over the next 1000 years, just have AGI solve it over the next month.
So I'll have to park my car in a garage first, then take a bus to the terminal just so that a robot can move my car from the place where I parked it to a different place? I was hoping it'd be something where I'd pull up to the curb, grab my bags and head in while the robot parked the car for me but apparently I'll still have to take a bus to the terminal?
Exactly, i think this product is solving an airport problem and not a user problem. Whenever i park at an airport i always look for the shortest distance to terminal / price, then chose an option that lands within an acceptable range. Unless i'm way for very long shuttle-bus isn't really on the table.
Sometimes airport parking is insanely expensive (cough Schipol), so I'll park further away anyway or park somewhere I can get the train. If this helped lower costs I'd be fine with this but probably they'd keep the high price anyway.
Gatwick long-term parking is not expensive if you book in advance. You need to take a slow bus shuttle to the terminal, but it's never more than 15-20 min including waiting time. I've used it a zillion times as I'd rather not give my keys to those meet & greet companies who drive your car 5 miles. It might void insurance and waiting times when you return tend to be over an hour.
Practical fact: Schiphol is built literally on top of one of the busiest train stations in the country.
Virtually all major cities have a direct rail connection to it, with frequencies from 2x / hour all the way up to 10x / hour. No direct connection? There's probably a one-transfer option running 4x / hour.
It's a five-minute walk from the train platform to the check-in desks. It is closer than the taxi stands or the parking shuttle. It is definitely cheaper than them as well. Level boarding is increasingly common, so there's a good chance you can just roll your luggage onto the train. The trains are generally clean and safe, homeless people and drug addicts on the train are incredibly rare.
If you visit The Netherlands, don't bother exploring other forms of transport until you are absolutely certain that rail transport is impossible. You'll just be wasting money and making things needlessly difficult for yourself.
Maybe that’s why the “elektrische bakfiets” (electrified cargo bike) is really popular here in the Netherlands. I’ve got one and don’t even live anywhere near an airport, closest one is at least an hour by car.
The Dutch have a saying, “Je bent niet van suiker” which means “You’re not made of sugar.”
Rain here is a fact of life, similar to the UK or Vancouver, Orlando or the Amazon Rainforest. Everyone who uses a bike for transportation here has a good rain jacket. And to put things in perspective, the normal rain seen in the Netherlands is more of a light drizzle and it generally comes in fits and spurts as moist air is pushed inland from the ocean. If you can afford to wait an hour, the rain is probably stopped.
Also, getting to the airport with a bike in the Netherlands is fine! There are nice protected bicycle lanes, a nice parking garage, good connections to neighboring infrastructure and you can always bring your bike down to the train platform if you need to go a bit further. When you live in a country that prioritizes cycling infrastructure, taking a bike is the practical, cheapest, and often fastest way to reach your destination.
Now to end on a point of more agreement, I agree with you that the demonization of AC in much of Europe is silly. Nobody is upset that in Bangkok or Tokyo that every building has AC. For some reason a certain type of European just doesn’t want to adapt and they will fight tooth and nail to prevent others from utilizing their own economic means in order to stay comfortable in their own homes. My home has solar panels and during the summer they produce much more power than I can utilize at one given moment anyway so if I want to run my AC at 400W during the peak heatwave that should be of no concern to anyone.
English actually has the exact same saying "You're not made of sugar, you won't melt."
A lot of people in car dependent regions have forgotten that you can dress for the weather, and that people have been traveling in all sorts of weather for hundreds of thousands of years.
Also, I think some of it is that decent parts of North America are vulnerable to heavy thunderstorms with hail and possible tornadoes, which are very different from the drizzle that Vancouver and Seattle get.
Like any Dutch mom would say to their kids complaining about cycling in bad weather: you’re not made of sugar are you? (Meaning: you won’t melt due to a bit of rain, quit being a pussy).
What about a unicorn shitting a rainbow onto your head?
The problem with "but sometimes..." arguments is that the "sometimes" rarely happens. For example, at www.hetregentbijnanooit.nl someone tracked how often it rained during their daily commute of 2x 45 minutes of cycling. Over an 11-year period, 90.3% of the commutes were dry - and that number would be even higher for people with a shorter commute, or those willing to wait a few minutes for the current rain squall to pass. Invest $100 in a luxury rain coat and the problem is solved.
Besides, in a country like The Netherlands the car is the less than ideal transport option! It is expensive, you keep getting stuck in traffic, you have to search for an available parking space, you can't park right at the door of your destination, and so on. For intra-city people movement, a bike is almost always the most convenient option.
Does it sometimes suck? Yeah, of course, but it sure beats getting stuck in traffic every single day.
For intra-city trips the car is not a superior mode of transport in the Netherlands. Cars take longer, often can't get as close to your destination, and cost a lot more. And you can't even get a few drinks. The only advantage of a car is you won't get wet if it rains.
You’re right, it’s not ideal. That’s why people in the Netherlands invented a special technology to compensate, which they call “clothes.”
Clothes are not really an ideal solution compared to surrounding yourself with a 4,000 pound piece of machinery that costs $50,000, loses half its value in 3 years, and degrades your mental and physical health.
Honestly avoiding people on the street improves my mental and physical health by reducing chronic cortisol. These fuckers stare at you and worse. A day of this and i am an anxious wreck.
It’s better to just get in your tanklet. Your little oasis. Home away from home.
That’s how i move nowadays from most point As to Bs. Music, AC, glasses. Perfect privacy. Calmness. Peace.
Kilograms of metal between you and the vicious, antagonistic reality of 2026 AD
It’s not just a car. It is an armor for the times like these.
lol, I can't tell if your comment is satire. Home of the brave, right? Where people looking at you is considered scary?
I'm a lot more scared of car crashes, since in most years they kill more people in the US than firearms do [1], and that's a pretty morbid statistic considering 58% of firearm deaths are suicides. [2] In other words, all those bullets flying at you as you walk down the street are less than half as deadly as driving in your vehicle.
I would encourage you to look in your local newspaper/news website and see how often someone loses their teenager in a car crash versus how often someone loses their teenager to violence on the street. I didn't lose any classmates to violence, but I lost at least one classmate to a car crash.
Here's another exercise: stand at a sidewalk at a traffic light intersection and count how many people in cars are actively on their phones.
The most statistically dangerous thing that happens to people walking is being hit by cars.
Somehow I doubt the Dutch are staring at each other with violent eyes and wishing they could cower away from the sidewalk into the safety of their RAM 1500 Crew Cabs. I struggle to imagine how that would happen: you can't even stare at people as you ride by them in the bike lanes in the Netherlands, the cyclists are going way too fast for that.
I think a lot of it is that the US doesn't take a paternalistic approach to mental healthcare or addiction treatment, so there are a lot of junkies and people with psychosis out on the streets in many cities. My understanding is that in Europe these people are more likely to be receiving some kind of treatment and be living in supported housing of some kind, whether mandatory or not, where in a lot of the US they are ranting and raving on the streets and on public transit. But, it's their freedom to refuse shelter and to refuse treatment (and our freedom to choose not to fund it).
I don’t know why it feels like this but the modern world doesn’t feel like a safe place with sane people around us.
I would rather take my chances on the road than on the sidewalk or on a bus, completely exposed and defenseless. Like a girl from certain bus video.
You mentioned yourself that you can even be hit by a car. Many such cases lately of people driving car into groups of people.
This world is mad and i think you are much crazier than me. It’s one thing to feel it and do something, anything in response. It’s another to pretend like nothing is happening.
I won't literally ask where you live where you feel this way as I don't need you to reveal personal info about yourself, but I truly believe that if you feel this way and you don't live in some kind of extreme outlier crime-laden area, you might want to seriously think about talking to a therapist.
This level of fear you describe is not a healthy or reasonable way to live your life and is not a very typical sentiment. A professional can help you figure out where these feelings are coming from and what you can do to manage them.
Sure, there are crazy and violent people out there, I don't deny that.
I know I was being somewhat of an urbanist zealot in my last comment, but for real...regardless of whether you prefer suburbs and spending more time in your car or the city and spending more time on foot, this isn't a healthy way for you to see the world in either case.
These feelings are coming from being stared at. I can manage them by staring at people back in not so pleasant ways and having a weapon in a pocket if the staring contest escalates.
Every major city I’ve ever lived in or visited mostly involved people doing the exact opposite of staring because urban culture generally has a “leave everyone else alone and mind your own business” aspect to it.
Because of that observation, I think it would be wise for you to dig deep on whether something about your own perceptions is failing you in this regard. I think there’s a strong likelihood that either something about your physical appearance looks very different, your own behavior is causing staring, or the staring isn’t happening at all in the way you describe.
Unless you just live in a specific place/culture where staring is prevalent.
But surely you can understand the reasons behind my doubts, even if you don’t agree with them.
I can’t trust your perspective if you have a habit of wearing clown suits around town.
I can’t trust your perspective if you are mistaking a normal momentary glance as a stare and are responding aggressively, exacerbating the problem, and you basically admitted that you escalate these “staring contests.”
How do you know those people aren't staring at you because you started staring at them in an unpleasant way in response to them randomly glancing a look vaguely in your direction?
I don't stare at people. They don't stare at me either. Problem solved?
The therapy that Juleiie needs begins with watching nine minutes of harmonious mixed car, bike, and pedestrian rush hour traffic at the intersection of Korte Prinsengracht and Haarlemmerstraat in Amsterdam.
Watching that video soothes my mind and warms my heart: thousands of people who have not Repo Man-style driven themselves unintelligent and insane manage to negotiate the same shared space simply by looking at one another in the eye, and acknowledging that everyone else exists.
The famous Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman believed drivers become more alert and cautious when there’s more uncertainty on the road.
Want fewer car accidents? Remove traffic signals and road signs:
>Hans Monderman believed that societies could make roads safer by making drivers more uncertain, and therefore alert.
>“When you treat people like idiots, they’ll behave like idiots.”
>That was the philosophy of Hans Monderman, the Dutch traffic engineer who became famous not for what he added to road design and urban planning, but for what he removed: curbs, traffic signals, signs. He believed drivers become more alert and cautious when there’s more uncertainty on the road.
>“The trouble with traffic engineers is that when there’s a problem with a road, they always try to add something,” Monderman said to Wired. “To my mind, it’s much better to remove things.”
>According to the anthropologist James C. Scott, Monderman began with the observation that:
>when an electrical failure incapacitated traffic lights, the result was improved flow rather than congestion. As an experiment, he replaced the busiest traffic-light intersection in Drachten, handling 22,000 cars a day, with a traffic circle, an extended cycle path, and a pedestrian area. In the two years following . . . the number of accidents plummeted to only two, compared with thirty-six crashes in the four years prior. Traffic moves more briskly through the intersection when all drivers know they must be alert and use their common sense, while backups and the road rage associated with them have virtually disappeared. Monderman likened it to skaters in a crowded ice rink who manage successfully to tailor their movements to those of the other skaters. He also believed that an excess of signage led drivers to take their eyes off the road, and actually contributed to making junctions less safe.
Unexpected interview in Groningen (Homage to Hans Monderman):
>What? You know all about transport in cities and you have never heard of Groningen? Well, check out this an unexpected street interview in Groningen, a slice of life as lived by our old friend and transport innovating colleague Robert Stussi. He has titled it: A Homage to Hans Monderman. Hear, hear!
Hans Monderman: Rethinking the design of streets and public space:
>An Urban Design London and Urban Design Group Lecture
>Hans Monderman has been one of the most significant influences on the current debate about the design of streets and spaces in the UK. A traffic engineer and road safety specialist from Northern Holland, he is celebrated as the pioneer of shared space as a means to influence speed and driver behaviour.
>Monderman has been the inspiration behind scores of towns and villages which work without road markings, traffic signs, signals, kerbs, barriers and bollards. ‘Most engineers, when faced with a problem, try to add something,’ he says. ‘My instinct has always been to take something away.’
>Following a short introduction by Rob Cowan, Hans explains his approach, work and experiences.
> Honestly avoiding people on the street improves my mental and physical health by reducing chronic cortisol. These fuckers stare at you and worse.
... you do realize that you are also "these fuckers", right? It's like complaining about "being stuck in traffic": no, you are the traffic.
The people on the street are just people. They aren't any different from your coworkers, your family members, or the parents of your kid's classmates. If merely being in the presence of other people causes you serious anxiety, you might want to consider asking a medical expert for potential therapy options before it gets even worse and you're left unable to leave the home at all.
If you're limiting yourself to carry-on, or even allowing for a (small) checked bag, there are bicycle panniers you can easily mount on the bike and then either carry aboard the plane or check.
Heck, you could pack a bicycle travel bag and pack your bike itself as checked luggage.
NYTimes Wirecutter has had some decent pannier reviews. I've had good luck with Arkel bags. Ortlieb look pretty bombproof.
I've biked to the airport lots of times. It depends on where you're going of but for short-ish trips a backpack is often though. And I did also once bring a suitcase on a (non electric) cargo bike. Worked fine.
There are bicycle lanes everywhere in Holland. I don't know a single person that bikes to the airport. From Amsterdam its at least 30 minutes by bike from the city center. Actually have no idea where I would park the bike. It's not common and not practical at this point.
I've cycled to Copenhagen Airport. A friend who lives about 15 minutes away (by bike) presumably cycles there when she flies for short meetings with just a backpack.
Isn't this just automated valet parking? Valet parking allows more efficient use of space, which makes it cheaper in places where space is at a premium. Automating it would change that tradeoff in a way that benefits the customer.
It's missing the value-add of valet parking - being able to pull up at the front door and walk away from your car. Without that, this is not valet anything. You still park then shuttle to the airport so there's zero benefit to the end user.
On the other hand, it leaves the car locked the whole time, no valet having your keys, no valet adjusting your seats, etc. Some of us avoid valet for some of these reasons.
If this thing could pick up my car from curbside at arrivals dropoff like a valet, but handle it robotically so there's no valet downside, it would be amazing.
on the other other hand it randomly pressure points the bottom of your car on points that weren't really meant for it.
agree that this would be way better if you just drove up in a queue and cars were taken away. one imagines the slow moving conveyors at amusement parks to get people closer to the ride's speed, tho given how long people take to park, get, take off the seat belt, find park, shut off the car, check their faces in the mirror, Find their cell, button their jacket, straighten up other stuff, find the rest of their shit, get out of the car, kiss their loved ones for 10 straight minutes, struggle with the tailgate, get their bats out, realize they forgot their phone, and finally head away from their car... probbably wouldn't work.
I see people take 5 minutes to get their car moving or get out at a grocery store. what they're doing I'll never guess. Car isn't even started for 3 minutes. When I first learned to drive my dad's hard and fast rule was to get the A/C running before anything else (other than insuring the car wouldn't move), the windows could be lowered with your other hand as a secondary.
It lifts the tires by scooping them up wheel-dolly style.
Machines precisely like this, but manually piloted, are used in automotive plants themselves to move vehicles that fail end-of-line test, had an assembly mishap affecting the powertrain, or otherwise need to be shuffled around when they're not able to move under their own power. As long as it has tires, it can be moved this way.
Stringo™ and DJ CarCaddy™ are some popular brands, if you want to see more of how this type of lift works.
In some places, it's no more convenient, and the value-add is just that you can pack cars in tighter. In Manhattan, for example, it's common for valet parking to be cheaper and less convenient.
It's still an impressive engineering feat, and (probably, given recent AI advances) an incredible time to market. I wonder when they started working on this, how big their company is, how much training data they put into it, etc.
It's probably got some AI but not the GPU gobbling kind. This is old school robotics using control loops and old AI algorithms. Sensors decide if you've parked correctly in the garage. Robot is dispatched via a queue once you've closed the door. Cameras and sensors guide the dolly into place. Robot follows predetermined route to the parking spot and uses sensors to detect obstructions (people, debris, other robots parking cars). Maybe there's lidar on board. Cameras and encoders guide the car perfectly into the designated spot. Robot whisks off to go charge or grab another car from the queue. It's effectively the same level of intelligence as a Roomba with the mechanics of an electric forklift. It's still cool but the fundamentals were developed 40+ years ago, we've just managed to shrink a lot of the tech down in size and power since then.
Ah, that answers something I was wondering about that the article didn't answer, which is how you can lift a car by its tyres without starting already under the tyre and without friction or forcing them to rotate.
Looks like the answer is (at least for this older system), come in from both sides of the tyre with two separate arms, and have each of those arms have their own little wheels on, so as you move inwards it lifts up the tyre and just rolls your mini wheels a little bit. Clever.
This is the video of the 11+ year old system installed in Århus Denmark by Lödige Industries from Germany.
Lödige Industries more recent solution is actually moving the whole pallet you park on, so you can also plug your car into it: https://youtu.be/-_ZxnDrfwGk?t=46
The system in London Gatwick UK is done by Stanley Robotics from France (which was acquired by HL Robotics from South Korea in 2024), but it could be similar.
Sorry yeah, I understood that they're not the same company or system, but I couldn't think of any way it could be done (aside from, as you say, parking already on it) so it was nice to see at least one solution.
It's solving the 'meatsack labor costs are really cramping my profitability' problem.
It's an inconveniently located valet service. But oh, you keep your keys. So it's really an inconvenient tow-truck valet service - or two guys with fork lifts.
I look for most spacious parking place with wide approach lanes, then shortest distance. Some car parks at the airports are just ridiculous. So narrow you can't exit the car.
I have a small car (regular hatchback) and a lot of the parking spots in the very large airport in my city are just marginally wider than my car. If you can’t get the spot at the end of the row, the only way to park in some of the buildings is to offload all your passengers, hope you find a spot where you can park “right door to right door” next to someone else so you can leave just enough room on the left side to squeeze out.
The parking buildings were built when cars were smaller than small cars today, and as the passenger count increased, so did the need for more spots, in a 0 sum game. They just split the cake in smaller slices.
Implementation is everything. If there’s enough capacity to drive up and drop your car off without queueing, and your car is ready to go as you leave the terminal then it sounds great. If there’s a half hour wait to get into the drop off zone, and another half hour wait after picking up your bags, and a half hour walk to the pickup/dropoff area then I’d prefer a 30 min shuttle.
I think this is solving the 'airport parking' problem my dad has. He drives to the airport, parks a mile or so away in some field and the company that owns the field drops him off at the terminal. He can leave his car there for the week.
This feels like a clever solution to have some spaces closer to the airport and many spaces further away.
Yes. I read the article. You leave your car in a close and available garage so you don't have to search for a space. The robot takes your car and finds you a parking space to leave it.
What about my comment was wrong? At some point my dad gets to park his car in a garage close to the airport, a robot deals with it. At that point what does it matter if the space is 30 seconds from the garage or 5 miles?
Turn on satellite view and you can see it is on the edge of the long stay parking. I dunno if you're realistically going to save a lot of time unless your parking space is right at the back of the long stay car park. Worth it if it's free! I assume it's overpriced though.
I love (/s) that there's a Cafe business that can survive on a singular customer base of people who parked their cars for a long time in one very specific parking lot.
Yes if you can get a train into a UK airport that's definitely the way, but even in the train-friendly UK that's often not feasible. For example Bristol airport has no railway. Heathrow is very inaccessible by train from the west. So there are unfortunately still plenty of reasons to drive to UK airports.
Bus to Bristol Temple Meads (railway station) used to be pretty good. Bristol now charge cars £8.50 (for 5mins) to use the drop zone. This means lots of cars dangerously trying to set-down/pick up passengers in the busy main roads outside the airport. The government should step in; passengers should have a drop zone they can safely walk into the terminal from.
The secret is that you can drop/collect people at the silver parking zone for free, and there's a shuttle to the airport which is quite frequent and short.
But I agree, trying to extract money from people like this is greedy and dangerous.
My experience of the airport flyer has not been at all good.
From London proper, it's best to take the train to the airports. If you're lucky you're flying out of London City Airport, but most of the time I'd go to Gatwick or Heathrow by train and it's a good way to get there.
Yes, it doesn't make a lot of sense if you can't pull up close to the terminal and leave your car there for the robot to park. But I assume this is just a prototype/trial of the robot tech with a view to expanding it in the future. Presumably they didn't want the risk of broken down (or stuck/confused) parking robots clogging up the busy airport drop off area.
Think of it as picking the parking garage or lot you like, but skipping the hunt for an open spot.
As these things go, if the service provider is able to make step one work and the airport continues the partnership, an eventual step would indeed be coming closer to or at the terminal, and the robot scooters (sounds a little like scaled-up warehouse robots) would move the car to storage.
Well that’s the design / usability / real needs part. Which is what these projects often miss. I see often tech replacing parts of a workflow but in reality the process / flow remains the same. Now some parts are digital and we call this “progress”. Strictly speaking it’s digitization but not progress.
Not a problem for me, :) I always take a shuttle or an Uber to the airport from where I parked, which is 10-15 mins away, because parking at the airport(JFK, LaGuardia, Newark at least) is stupid expensive
The article says:
> The facility is within walking distance of the South Terminal, although a free shuttle bus is also available.
I will give you a reason why this might be useful. Not at Gatwick. (I always took the train when I lived in that area and usually ended up at Heathrow or Stanstead anyway). But at Raleigh NC for example, you have to go up 5 levels to find a spot, (I have never seen an open spot on levels 1-4) and spend about 10 minutes or more finding a spot after that, then walking from your spot to the elevator, then back out. Or sometimes the lot is filled up, and you have to drive to a lot far away, then spend even longer finding a spot that will be at the far end of the lot, then walking a good distance to the bus terminal.
That's if you know the system, and are aware that you won't find spots on the lower levels, and that the "x spots open" indicators are lying. If you're new, you can spend 30+ minutes on a goose chase, miss your flight etc.
This solves that problem; not the bus one. (If the drop-off location is easy to access; if not, then it's pointless)
> "you won't find spots on the lower levels, ... the "x spots open" indicators are lying"
A simpler and cheaper solution would be to fix those availability signs. Surely this is not a problem that a few cameras and some smart software couldn't solve.
Atlanta/Hartsfield just opened a new parking deck with those cameras and I bet some fancy as f### AI powered system. 7 level deck, I tried 4 of them before I realized the green/red lights were just randomly switching back in forth, so the total on each floor never reached zero. Fortunately, the top deck was free.
When I got back I walked past the kiosk that said "type in your license plate and locate your car" for those who forgot where they parked, like I did. Typed it in - no car found. (this was a recent trip, out on 07/23 and back on 07/25)
Also consider the possibility that the people who argue against the hard problem of consciousness may, in fact, not be conscious. How could they ever understand the nuance of conscious experience and how it is fundamentally different from 'structure and function' if they don't have it? To them there is only the easy problem of consciousness.
And, of course, if they disagree with me about this and want to claim that they are, in fact, conscious, I'm not sure they can do that because... well the hard problem of consciousness.
I would buy this in a heartbeat. I am profoundly bothered by the slop software that is on every TV these days. I keep joking that as tech invades more and more corners of our lives, we will at some point in the future be helping our parents with their couches by saying "Have you tried restarting your couch?"
Don't get me wrong, tech is great when it's a value-add, but TV tech has gotten out of control.
Any suggestions for a scanner meant for bulk scans of old family photos (think a few thousand images)? I bought, what I thought, was a reasonably solid scanner, the Pacific Image Powerfilm scanner but the software is so janky that it hangs every two strips and has to be restarted making the entire process super labor intensive. Also the entire "bulk feature" where it's meant to pull the strips one at a time iis not even close to working.
Granted my film scanner (epson v750) has gotten on in years the more prosumer-professional Epson scanners were good, software was still a bit janky but IIRC there is aftermarket scanner software for them.
It can do 36 exposures but you have to cut them into strips and place them in a carrier but it isn't terrible and if you store your negs in film protectors you are cutting them down anyway.
I am fairly sure the newest version (V850) is the same but be aware they aren't cheap, at least $1k+ USD but still cheaper than the next level up which are pro drum scanners and they are many orders of magnitude more expensive.
I'm curious what you mean when you say that this clearly is not intelligence because it's just Markov chains on steroids.
My interpretation of what you're saying is that since the next token is simply a function of the proceeding tokens, i.e. a Markov chain on steroids, then it can't come up with something novel. It's just regurgitating existing structures.
But let's take this to the extreme. Are you saying that systems that act in this kind of deterministic fashion can't be intelligent? Like if the next state of my system is simply some function of the current state, then there's no magic there, just unrolling into the future. That function may be complex but ultimately that's all it is, a "stochastic parrot"?
If so, I kind of feel like you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The laws of physics are deterministic (I don't want to get into a conversation about QM here, there are senses in which that's deterministic too and regardless I would hope that you wouldn't need to invoke QM to get to intelligence), but we know that there are physical systems that are intelligent.
If anything, I would say that the issue isn't that these are Markov chains on steroids, but rather that they might be Markov chains that haven't taken enough steroids. In other words, it comes down to how complex the next token generation function is. If it's too simple, then you don't have intelligence but if it's sufficiently complex then you basically get a human brain.
Just to pile on here, there's also ambiguity around how the observed girl is selected. Consider the following framing:
I go to a random house on a random street and knock on the door. A young girl opens the door. I ask how many siblings they have and they say one. What's the probability that they have a sister?
Now it's 50% even though cosmetically it seems like it'd be fair to say that the family has at least one daughter. The reason is that once I see a girl at the door, I'm slightly more confident in that it's a GG household since a GB or BG household would sometimes show a boy opening the door (assuming the two kids are equally likely to open the door).
P(GG | G at door) = P(G at door | GG) P(GG) / P(G at door)
This is the crux of the "paradox," which is really just an interpretation problem. Most people assume that the question asks exactly your scenario, i.e. if a specific child is selected and it's a girl, what's the probability that the sibling is also a girl? In that case, the event space is just GB or GG, and p(GG)/(p(GB) + p(GG)) = 0.5. (BG is not in the event space because we are conditioning on a specific child being a girl.)
However, if the question is interpreted as "what's the probability of having two girls if we know there aren't two boys," then the event space is GB, BG, GG, and p(GG)/(p(GB) + p(BG) + p(GG)) = 1/3. Both GB and BG are in the event space because we are not conditioning on the sex of one specific child.
You’re making the classic mistake in conflating computing how pathways to conditions can rise from computing conditionals given the current state. There’s absolutely no information theoretical difference between you saying “A girl opened the door” and “I was told the family has a girl.”
Look at the more technical descriptions using conditional probabilities of the Monty Hall problem as it is essentially equivalent. You’re trying to factor in the probability of whether Monty knows if a goat is behind a door when the observable information is that there is an open door with a goat. One you make that observation many things collapse.
I think two possible effects of AI are often conflated.
On the one hand you can imagine that work gets supercharged, allowing companies to produce 10x the number of widgets at 1/10th the cost. The economy would grow rapidly, wealth inequality would presumably be exacerbated, jobs would be automated, we might need some version of universal basic income, and so on. People debate whether or not this kind of transition is imminent or if it'd take decades.
On the other hand, it's conceivable that not much would happen in the "bulk" of the economy while at the same time the frontier of humanity might be pushed forward. We may see new treatments for diseases, new types of energy production, and so on. In this version of the world, jobs would mostly remain unchanged (at least in the short to intermediate term), perhaps with some small multiplicative efficiency factor, the economy wouldn't grow rapidly, there wouldn't be any mass unemployment, and so on.
In my mind, I'm much more excited about the second kind of impact that AI might have than the first. I guess I don't really feel like I want to have 10x the stuff that I already have while I'm really excited about someone curing cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, MS, and so on.
If stuff is 1/10th as expensive as it is now, you can also work 1/10th as hard for 1x as much stuff as you have now, instead of 1x as hard as you work now for 10x the stuff.
I'm not making a value judgement on how much I would or other people should consume in the first scenario. I'm simply saying that you could have profound effects due to AI without it being evident in the top-level metrics like economic growth, unemployment, and so on. It seems like we often say that either we see explosive economic growth or AI has either no, or at best very minimal impact in our lives. I don't think this dichotomy is correct.
I agree that that dichotomy is not necessarily true, but also you gave your reason for being "more excited" about one side of the dichotomy being that you "don't want 10x the stuff," and my point is that you're undervaluing the flexibility of material abundance.
Even if AI can't replace an entire worker, they may still be able to help one worker do the work of two which by itself could lead to massive unemployment (at least in the short term.)
In this instance, it may not lead to massive unemployment as it could be simply that we do more white collar work than we currently do. White collar work, for the large part, is not born out of necessity, as white-collars, we do not produce things, we oversee the process, we market, we sell, we do accounting, we support, and so on. The more of these we do, the better our companies can compete. But there is no inherent reason that a mature company could not reduce its white-collar jobs to a halt if there was not competition. White-collars work because the competition also hires and gets them to work. Hence we say "productivity is increasing but we have to work more". So even if AI leads to massive improvements in white-collar work productivity, as long as it is not entirely replacing people, it may not lead to job losses at all.
I think the OP was pointing out that the reason Strasssen's algorithm works is that it somehow uncovered a kind of repeated work that's not evident in a simple divide and conquer approach. It's by the clever definition of the various submatrices that this "overlapping" work can be avoided.
In other words, the power of Strasssens algorithm comes from a strategy that's similar to / reminiscent of dynamic programming.
Saying that a computer exhibits artificial-SUPER-intelligence feels a little like saying that one universal Turing machine is more expressive than another universal Turing machine. The thing that sets the two Turing machines apart is not how expressive they are but how quickly and efficiently they can arrive at the given output.
It's hard for me to imagine a task that ASI could complete which a human with enough time and determination couldn't also complete, although I can imagine such tasks for dogs which don't exhibit the same level of intelligence as humans. Maybe I'm too human-centric and naive. Maybe there are other tasks out there that are beyond human intelligence even given infinite time.
If, however, my view of intelligence is correct, then the distinction between ASI and AGI is illusory, and the real distinction that we would see between systems is just their speed, efficiency, determination, etc.
In my mind, once we achieve AGI, we immediately have ASI: just run that AGI on a faster computer, across many nodes, etc. Instead of having humans solve quantum gravity over the next 1000 years, just have AGI solve it over the next month.
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