CeffTheCeph

Your worth is defined by how much you give away, not how much you accumulate. Stark contrast to our Western societies.

I have questions about the macroeconomic implications of AI replacing jobs. Does this mean that those workers will shift to other non-AI jobs? Or does this mean that unemployment goes up and there just aren't any jobs for people any more?

The way I am thinking about this, if corporations are able to hoard more wealth and increase profits substantially by getting rid of the need to pay people, how does the economy function if the money that would be paid to those workers is no longer circulating back into the economy?

If people then will get money from a UBI instead of labor income, who pays the government taxes? Corporations? Consumption taxes on people?

If corporations manage to get labor costs to near zero, profits go to near infinity, which is the goal of profit maximizers. But then there is no money in the hands of individuals to be able to pay to consume the goods or services these corporations provide? Is this desire to replace human labor with AI not just a living example of the myth of Icarus?

Any economists out there interested in breaking these issues down into more of a layman language for me? Thanks!

Thanks, I think that is a useful observation. I agree in that I wouldn't necessarily say it is a problem for the validity of the proof itself, but I do like the extra scrutiny.

This is fun, I appreciate it. I've only made it as far down this rabbit hole to the part of building AGI on current architecture. Had no idea how much deeper this thing goes. This is the reason I was engaged in the first place, thanks for leading me down here.

Tbf, I personally don’t think consciousness is necessarily non-algorithmic but that’s a different debate.

I'm looking forward to that one when it comes up!

Thanks for responding! I never meant to claim that I am right. The whole purpose I am engaged in here is that I do not understand the proof at all and am trying to understand it better.

Here is where F_QG is introduced in the proof:

As we do not have a fully consistent theory of quantum gravity, several different axiomatic systems have been proposed to model quantum gravity [26–32]. In all these programs, it is assumed a candidate theory of quantum gravity is encoded as a computational formal system FQG = {LQG, ΣQG, Ralg}

Here, LQG a first-order language whose non-logical symbols denote quantum states, fields, curvature, causal relations, etc. ΣQG = {A1, A2, . . . } is a finite (or at least recursively- enumerable) set of closed LQG-sentences embodying the fundamental physical principles. Ralg the standard, effective rules of inference used for computations

Is this not just saying that it is the existing theories (string theory, LQG, etc.) that are assuming gravity takes the form of a formal computational system? And so, F_QG as it is defined above is how any formal computational system is logically constructed, as in it has to have those three components in order to logically be a formal computational system?

I am not a logician and do not understand what a first-order language is, or closed sentences or all those logic terms in the definition of notation. However, is F_QG in this case not just logically how any theory would need to be constructed in order to logically be a formal computational system? Is there an assumption being made here with regard to those three components in how formal systems are logically constructed?

Thank you for this. My recent hyper fixation has lead me down the rabbit hole of non-algorithmic theories of consciousness with a specific focus on the theory mentioned in this proof. Would I be interpreting this proof correctly in asserting that if consciousness is non-algorithmic, this proof means AGI is impossible?

Thank you!

This is the third time I have seen this story come up from three different science journalism websites recently.

Here is the actual published proof.

It seems a lot of commenters on these threads have a lot of skepticism about the authors claims, as we should with such a bold claim. Are there any mathematicians or logicians here that can actually unpack the proof with scrutiny and explain it to me in lay terms?

Good unpopular opinion!

The goal of capitalism is maximizing capital. What happens in society then is that human well-being comes second after capital maximizing. Yes, it is uncontested that capitalism has improved global human well-being. GDP growth is very obviously correlated with increase in human well-being. But correlation does not imply causation. If the goal were to maximize human well-being first and have capital come second, the outcomes would be different.

One criticism of capitalism that is ignored is that it was the 19th-20th century discovery of super-low entropy energy sources that were incorporated into production that has lead to such rapid growth in technological advances and efficiency. Within neoclassical economic models oil is considered a substitute for capital (which is infinite), not as a limited natural resource that provides energy that allows production to take place.

And so, as capitalism chugs on and on in society, burning more and more oil will continue to generate more and more capital, growth will go up and up and finally after all of that human well-being will go up and up. There is no endgame there, what happens when oil runs out? Or when there is too much CO2 in the atmosphere for human well-being to be sustained on earth?

If the goal changes from capital maximizing to human well-being maximizing then there is an endgame, to ensure ~~sure~~ that human well-being (infinite?) is always sustained on earth. Increasing capital can come after that instead.

However, their argument rely on that ”quantum gravity” is what makes the universe uncomputable. I’m not sure how valid this statement is.

Here is the assumption the authors use that brings quantum gravity into the proof:

As we do not have a fully consistent theory of quantum gravity, several different axiomatic systems have been proposed to model quantum gravity [26–32]. In all these programs, it is assumed a candidate theory of quantum gravity is encoded as a computational formal system F_QG = {L_QG, ΣQG, R_alg} .

I interpret their assumption to mean that describing quantum gravity in this way is how it would be defined as a formal computational system. This is the approach that all of the other leading theories (String Theory, Loop Quantum Gravity) have taken, which have failed to provide a fully consistent and complete description of gravity. I think the proof is saying that non-computational components can be incorporated into a fully consistent and complete formal system and so taking a non-computational approach to quantum gravity would then incorporate gravity into the formal system thereby completing the theory of everything.

Does that make sense? I am not a logician by any extent and I have no idea how robust this proof really is. I do think the bold claims the authors are making deserve heavy scrutiny, but I am not the one to provide that scrutiny.

Disproving the 'matrix theory' is just the catchy headline to garner clicks. The results of the research are beyond just the matrix. For example, this proof means that non-algorithmic determinism isn't something that represents a lack of deeper theoretical understanding. There are theories that consciousness is non-algorithmic. In that case, this proof means that AGI is also impossible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_ranking

It isn't a perfect system, but it is a place to start.