OpenAI has made realizing artificial general intelligence, the point at which the capabilities of an AI surpass those of a human, its number one priority — yet plenty of questions remain.
For one, the point at which AGI will become a reality remains a huge point of contention, with experts’ predictions ranging from years to the larger part of a decade to the current trajectory of machine learning being a dead end that’ll never get there.
Even the exact definition of AGI is still heavily debated, making it a murky milestone.
Regardless, the stakes are high: the AI industry has poured untold billions of dollars into building out datacenters to train AI models, an investment that’s likely many years away from paying off.
Naturally, OpenAI CEO and hypeman Sam Altman has remained optimistic. During a Reddit AMA this week, he even claimed that AGI is “achievable with current hardware.”
His projection shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s exactly what we’d expect from the person in charge of a multibillion-dollar company that has made it its mission to realize AGI.
But even for Altman, who has a track record of making lofty statements about AI, it’s an unusual claim, suggesting he believes the company’s current investments in AI infrastructure will result in realizing AGI.
However, without any further clarification of what he means by “current hardware,” it’s a fairly empty statement.
Altman’s claim is reminiscent of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s original promise well over a decade ago that his carmaker’s hardware at the time would allow a car to fully drive itself, a woefully inaccurate and misleading prediction. In August, Tesla quietly pulled any mentions of those promises from its website.
Earlier this month, Musk admitted that even the latest generation of Teslas’ hardware may not be sufficient to enable an “unsupervised” version of the company’s so-called “Full Self-Driving” software, which currently needs to be constantly monitored by a human driver.
It’s of course in Altman’s interest to claim that the company’s current hardware investments will enable a fantastical future in which AIs can surpass the intellect of a human being: much of his company’s valuation depends on such a promise and the continued enthusiasm from investors.
But despite being in charge of the company, it’s hard to get any degree of certainty from Altman. In a lengthy blog post titled “The Intelligence Age” last month, he predicted that “superintelligence” is a mere “few thousand days” away — a hilariously vague metric that could equate to many years.
“It may take longer, but I’m confident we’ll get there,” he added.
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