Flying an aircraft requires talking to air traffic control which existing systems can’t do. Though obviously not a huge issue when the aircraft already has radios, except all those FAA regulations apply to every single aircraft you’ve retrofitting.
The advantage of general intelligence is using a small set of hardware now lets you tackle a huge range of tasks or in the above aircraft types. We can mix speakers, eyes, and hands to do a vast array of tasks. Needing new hardware and software for every task very quickly becomes prohibitive.
The advantage of general intelligence is that it can fly you home to the nearest airport, drive you the last mile, and, once home, cook you supper. But for that you need the hardware to be equally general.
If you need to retrofit airplanes and in such a way that the hardware is specific to flying, no need for general intelligence. Special intelligence will work just as well. Multimodal AI isn't AGI.
No, the advantage of AGI isn’t being able to do all those physical things, the advantage of AGI is you don’t need to keep building new software for every task.
Let’s suppose you wanted to replace a pilot for a 747, now you need to be able fly, land, etc which we’re already capable of. However, actual job of a pilot goes well past just flying.
You also need to do the preflight such as verifying fuel is appropriately for the trip, check weather, alternate landing spots, preflight walk around the aircraft etc etc. It also needs to be able to keep up with any changing procedures as a special purpose softener you’re talking a multi billion dollar investment, or have an AGI run through the normal pilot training and certification process for a trivial fraction of those costs.
That’s the promise of AGI.
> the advantage of AGI is you don’t need to keep building new software for every task.
Even the human's brain seems to be 'built' for its body. You're moving into ASI realm if the software can configure itself for the body automatically.
> That’s the promise of AGI.
That's the promise of multimodal AI. AGI requires general ability – meaning basically able to do anything humans can – which requires a body as capable as a human's body.