What is AGI? How is it different from AI?

As artificial intelligence continues to advance at a rapid pace, it’s easy to wonder where this new era is headed.

Companies like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Sora are changing the way we work with chatbots, text-to-image, and text-to-video generators, while bots and self-driving cars help us perform daily tasks. The latter isn’t as mainstream as the former, but it’s only a matter of time.

But where are the limits? Are we heading towards a dystopian world run by computers and robots? Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is essentially the next step, but as things stand, we’re still some way off from becoming a reality.

AGI explained

AGI is considered “strong” AI, while “narrow” AI is what we know as generative chatbots, image generators, and coffee-making bots.

Strong AI refers to software that has the same or better cognitive abilities than humans, meaning it can solve problems, achieve goals, think and learn independently without any human input or help. Narrow AI can solve one problem or complete one task at a time, without any perception or awareness.

This level of AI has only been seen in movies so far, but it’s likely we’ll be moving towards this level of AI-driven technology in the future. Exactly when this will be achieved is still up for debate – some experts claim it will take centuries, while others think it could be just a few years. However, Ray Kurzweil’s book The Singularity Is Near predicted it would be between 2015 and 2045, which was considered a reasonable timeline by the AGI research community in 2007…although this That’s a pretty broad schedule.

Given how rapidly narrow AI is developing, it’s easy to imagine some form of general AI emerging in society within the next 20 years.

It is becoming increasingly clear that all roads lead to AGI. Tesla is building an extremely computationally efficient mini-AGI for FSD.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 29, 2023

What can AGI do?

Although it does not yet exist, AGI could theoretically perform in a manner that is indistinguishable from humans and will likely exceed human capabilities due to rapid access to large data sets. While it may look like you’re interacting with a human when using something like ChatGPT, AGI is theoretically capable of interacting with humans without any human intervention.

The capabilities of AGI systems include common sense, background knowledge, and abstract thinking, as well as practical abilities such as creativity, fine motor skills, natural language understanding (NLU), navigation, and sensory perception.

When will we see artificial general intelligence (AGI)—when artificial intelligence can do almost anything the human brain can do (and maybe better)—become a reality?

We asked 33 AI-focused YC founders and here are their responses.

▶️ https://t.co/ciLInPGglj pic.twitter.com/gBSU5mO8vi

— Y Combinator (@ycombinator) November 21, 2023

The combination of all these capabilities will essentially provide AGI systems with advanced capabilities such as the ability to understand symbolic systems, create fixed structures for all tasks, use different types of knowledge, engage in metacognition, handle multiple types of learning algorithms, and understand belief systems .

This means that AGI systems will be super-intelligent and may also possess additional characteristics such as imagination and autonomy, as well as physical characteristics such as the ability to sense, detect and act.

AGI vs Artificial Intelligence?

We know that narrowly defined AI systems are now widely used by the public and are quickly becoming part of everyday life, but they currently require humans to function at every level. It requires machine learning and natural language processing, and then a human providing prompts to perform the task. It performs tasks based on previously learned knowledge and is essentially only as intelligent as the level of information provided by humans.

However, the results we see from narrow AI systems are not beyond what the human brain can achieve. It’s just to help us, not to replace humans or be smarter than humans.

In theory, AGI should be able to take on any task and demonstrate a high level of intelligence without human intervention. It will be able to perform better than humans and narrow the scope of artificial intelligence on almost every level.

What is the future of AGI?

Stephen Hawking warned of the dangers of artificial intelligence in 2014, telling the BBC at the time: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of humanity.

“It kicks itself into gear and redesigns itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans are limited by slow biological evolution and cannot compete and will be replaced.”

Kurzweil continued his prediction in 2017 in “The Singularity Is Near,” saying that computers will reach human-level intelligence by 2029. He predicts that artificial intelligence itself will grow exponentially, enabling it to operate at levels beyond human understanding and control.

He continued: “I have set a date of 2045 for the ‘Singularity’, when we will increase our effective intelligence a billionfold by merging with the intelligence we create.”

Of course, these discussions and predictions have sparked debate around the responsible use of CGI. Artificial intelligence as we know it today is considered “responsible,” and there have been calls for regulation of many AI companies to ensure these systems don’t get out of control. We have already seen how the use of artificial intelligence can have controversial and unethical consequences if it falls into the wrong hands. So it’s no surprise that the same debate is happening around general artificial intelligence.

In fact, society must approach the development of general artificial intelligence with great caution. The ethical issues surrounding AI today, such as the ability to control bias in its knowledge base, are undoubtedly similar to those for general AI, but to a much greater degree of harm.

If general artificial intelligence systems can essentially think for themselves and no longer need human influence, then Stephen Hawking’s vision could become a reality.

Featured Image: Ideographies