Some AI leaders like Sam Altman CEO of OpenAI are telling us that Artificial General Intelligence, AGI could be here sooner than we ever thought.
To be honest, we still don't have a definite description of what AGI is meant to be but the idea of it is that it's supposed to be the next level of AI as we know it today.
It's supposed to be so powerful that it surpasses human intelligence. That particular description freaks me out because at this moment, we humans are the smartest living things and that's why we have full control over the earth and have built a world that favors us more than all other living things.
So the question I have regarding AGI is if they're thought to be smarter than us, will all this change.
They're thought to be smarter than ever the brightest scientists we have and are able to understand complex math, generate articles like a pro and even so our most troubling medical problems. This sounds like a world I would love to live in but the downside is if we cannot control it. Experts like Sam Altman from OpenAI and Dario Amodei from Anthropic predict that AGI could show up within the next decade. Elon Musk says it could arrive even faster.
Besides the control issue, science AGI is smarter than humans, that would make lots of people irrelevant in certain job positions. Most repetitive tasks will be handled by them and even executive, thinking jobs can easily be handled by AI.
For instance I'm working on an app project and I'm working with some developers. I'v been able to cut the cost of hiring developers drastically because we're working with Chatgpt to provide the codes so there's less work for the developers. With AGI, I wouldn't even need the developers at all and that means they lose their job as developers. This is problem we'll face.
After AGI is incorporated into Robots,. robots will become smarter and can do jobs like caretaker. You could leave your kids with a robot and it takes care of them even better than a human caregiver. But will we be able to keep such robots safe and fair for our children?
It's necessary that we think about all of this before we move into the future.
Of course not everyone buys into the hype of AGI arriving this soon. Skeptics like Gary Marcus argue that current AI isn’t capable of reaching AGI. It just doesn’t have the reasoning skills to do so. And some tests show AI still struggles with basic facts. I think there’s a real race between those who think AGI will soon shape our future and those who say it’s mostly hype.
So, the bottom line is we don’t know exactly when AGI will arrive but one thing’s clear, we should start preparing now.