TL;DR: Arguably the most damaging myth in AI is the idea that abstract thinking and reasoning are detached from physical reality. The difference between the concepts involved in cooking and those used in math and coding, isn’t as big as you would think! Going from simple numbers to extreme mathematical concepts, I show why even the most abstract fields cannot be grasped without sensory experience.

SHORT VERSION: written on Medium

Table of Contents (I specify the longer sections!)

CHAPTER 1: Link between abstractions and the physical world

Section 1 – Intro and presentation of the thesis

Section 2 – Why abstract fields depend on the physical world (main argument)

Section 3 – What transpositions and analogies tell us about cognition

Section 4 – Intellectual fields aren’t objective. They come from subjective experience [long!]

Section 5 – A closer look at extreme and unintuitive abstractions

Section 6 – Creativity is a property of reality

Section 7 – The crucial role of mental imagery for reading and writing

CHAPTER 2: Counterarguments and weird cases

Section 8 – If humans rely on visual imagery to understand math, what about blind people? [long!]

Section 9 – The role of physical interaction in the human experience

Section 10 – Non-intellectual abstractions (intentionality, emotions, selfhood, etc.)

Section 11 – Isn’t AI already smarter than us on certain tasks? [very long!]

Section 12 – Is it really EVERYTHING that comes from the physical world?

CHAPTER 3: Implications for AI

Section 13 – What is the role of language in intelligence?

Section 14 – We don't need to build the Matrix: AGI ≠ 4K VR physics engine [long!]

Section 15 – Where are we at? Isn't multimodality baked into modern AI?

Section 16 – How to build AGI?

Section 17 – Closing thoughts

CHAPTER 0 (before reading)

I came up with the idea of writing this text while managing a subreddit called “r/newAIParadigms”. It is a subreddit where other redditors and I passionately talk about intelligence and how to reproduce it in AI. Over there, we discuss various and ambitious ideas on how to achieve AGI. While none of us are researchers or experts at anything, we are just curious enough to have meaningful conversations!

I’d like to take this opportunity to make a brief disclaimer about the text as a whole. This text was not written to convince or to prove anything. Even though I’...

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