Gary Marcus

Current AI doesn't even get near *mouse* intelligence--and a great deal of what mice (and most other animals) do is innate. If we could get achieve artificial mouse intelligence, we'd have a good foundation for human intelligence.

I agree. At least if that is the type of artificial intelligence we are after - the kind that allows a wee beastie like a mouse to do all the cognitive operations necessary for mouse survival

And I would argue most of the brain is devoted to this kind of adaptive control of behavior. And it would be super cool to build AI like that - as artificial agents...

But is that what AI folks want? Or are they after the ability to perform abstract reasoning and other really intellectual operations better than humans can?

Indeed, what AI folk want is abstract reasoning. They tried jumping straight to it under the Minsky Symbolic AI program, which failed. Maybe we can jump straight to human cognition with ML, but i'm skeptical. I think we need to pass through mouse intelligence. Short jump to human

This is the ratbrain.h hypothesis: that to get humanbrain from ratbrain all you need to change is some constants in ratbrain.h. If true, it predicts abrupt change in power of what we can build. Consistent with GAI alarmism.

seriously doubt it. if it was just one parameter change from rat to human level intelligence, human level intelligence would like be much more widespread given the large adaptive advantage.

The huge adaptive advantage of human-level intelligence apparently only happens at our level. Very smart apes and hominids were around for millions of years, but the population didnt explode. Evolution doesnt get to anticipate how useful something will be before it gets there.