Creating ASI does not require AGI.
A common narrative suggests that AGI will be achieved through $100 billion-level computing clusters, which will then accelerate AI development, leading to ASI. However, if AI development itself can be automated by AI, ASI can be achieved without the need for broad-task capabilities. By developing an AI specialized in automating ML training, ASI could be achieved.
Specialized AIs like AlphaFold and AlphaGo exist. These AIs are vastly superior to humans in protein analysis and the game of Go, respectively.
Moreover, compared to current language models, these AIs require less computational resources.
If an AI as efficient as AlphaFold or AlphaGo, but specialized in AI development, were created, the progress of AI development would likely accelerate dramatically.
If this idea occurred to me, surely someone else must have thought of it already. However, I rarely hear about AI specialized in AI development. While such projects might exist, the lack of prominence suggests they have not yielded significant results.
I have presented my reasoning and examples, but I cannot identify any flaws in my logic. If my reasoning is correct, there should already be empirical evidence supporting it—news or academic papers showcasing an AI specialized in AI development achieving remarkable results.
Creating an AI specialized in AI development seems more meaningful than creating an AI specialized in Go. After all, a Go-playing AI can only play Go.
Why would DeepMind create a Go-playing AI without creating an AI specialized in AI development? This seems puzzling.
1 I’ve heard that Daniel Kokotajlo has expressed a similar idea.
2 I searched LessWrong for posts on this topic but found none that directly align. The closest I found discussed how AGI might emerge as a collection of specialized AIs.
Link to the post
3 I am a beginner on LessWrong and used translation tools to write this post. Apologies for any unnatural expressions or missing information. I will correct issues as soon as they are pointed out.