"Since I am feeling especially bold, I will make another prediction: deep learning will not produce the universal algorithm. There is simply not enough there to create such a complex system."
While I (emotionally) agree, it will be interesting to see if the complexity (and non-linearity) of these algorithms permit 'emergent' behavior to appear.
You can create emergent behavior even with very crude, seemingly simplistic rule-based models. Forget about AI. Think about modeling processes. You can model a process using a very crude set of hand-crafted rules and still get useful simulations that give you valuable insight into the original process.
There is a wonderful free course about this kinds of stuff:
Or, without wanting to sound too conspiratorial, it's easier to sell the magic of "intelligent machines" to the consumer if they have been drowned in AI coverage in the media when there finally is helpful algorithms and useful voice interactions and so on. This is completely speculative on my part but I wonder about the autonomy of people and how it could change mental models if all the machines around you are supposed to be smarter than you
Has anyone proven logically that I, an entity, can create a new entity that is more intelligent than me? My intuition might be wrong, but how would that ever be a possibility, other than me aiding in the creation of a new human being?
Relatively weak human arms have enough strength to assemble tools that are much stronger than the original arms. A small, well placed flame can initiate a reaction that burns even hotter and brighter than itself. Our abstract concepts of strength, heat, brightness, and so on, are latent to varying degrees in the environment. Certain arrangements of raw materials release that potential.
If those analogies hold, then intelligence is still another concept expressed by some configurations of matter. Who knows how much "latent intelligence" is available to be released, but I guess the assumption is that it's much greater than what's already manifesting in our brains.
The most well-known rebuttal is that Einstein's mother created someone more intelligent than her. There was no intelligence when the universe began (at least as far as we know), then intelligence was created as an emergent property of biological systems.
I see otherwise, those end2end approaches are indeed leading me to think might that deep learning is the one algorithm that could help us discovery the universal representation of knowledge.
While I (emotionally) agree, it will be interesting to see if the complexity (and non-linearity) of these algorithms permit 'emergent' behavior to appear.