[greysphere]

Yeah, if you could input data set X with quality Q(X) and output data set Y of the same size with Q(Y) > Q(X), you'd really be on to something. But I don't think such a system exists yet, or even close. Inputting the internet, outputting a sea of garbage with a handful of diamonds that people have to spelunk through the garbage for seems the best so far. Madlibs is a pretty equivalent activity, and while fun, certainly not anything one would consider AGI. We need a revolutionary improvement on automated spelunking to get anywhere. Maybe we'll get a good spam filter as a side effect!

But even if you had a system, there's still the resource cost to run the algorithm (needs to be bounded or else you've just made a finite jump) and the gains you make need to not decay (or again you've just made a finite jump).

And all this needs to be compared against investing in humans - which seem pretty clearly to have AGI properties (but with some really bad constant factors. 20 year training time - ridiculous!)

To me it seems things are a long way off and least a couple of major innovations away. But at least there's some ideas of the problems to tackle, which is a big step up!