If you thought AI wouldn’t surpass human intelligence for decades, you’d be sadly mistaken. According to the CEO of SingularityNET, a major player in the industry, we’re only a few years away from this pivotal moment. Here’s when he thinks the Singularity will happen, with the creation of the first general-purpose AI!
With the launch of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, generative AI has become an unavoidable phenomenon. In just under a year, OpenAI’s chatbot has attracted over 1.6 billion users !
From many other similar tools have been developedsuch as Anthropic Claude and Google Bard, as well as other types of models such as the DALL-E or MidJourney image generators.
One question is now on everyone’s lips: when will the singularity occur? the moment when artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence and escape its control.
This is the hypothetical point at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, leading to drastic and unpredictable changes in human civilization.
Before the emergence of this new generation of tools, powered by the Transformer architecture created by Google in 2017, most experts estimated that this event would not have not take place for several decades.
We could therefore that humans had time to prepare for a world transformed by AI and supercomputers, that it was something as abstract as it was remote.
However, the tremendous advances of recent years have changed all that. All predictions have had to be revised, and the singularity could finally happen very soon..
General AI superior to humans by 2031?
This is the opinion of many specialists, including Ben Goertzel, CEO of SingularityNET which specializes in AI and blockchain.
Interviewed by Decrypthe claimed that “ I’d say now, three to eight years is my prognosisand part of the reason is that large language models such as Meta’s Llama 2 or OpenAI’s GPT-4 are helping and are major advances. “.
As he explains, ” these systems have greatly increased the world’s enthusiasm for AGI (general artificial intelligence), so you’ll have more resources, both money and just human energy, more smart young people want to dive in and work on AGI “.
This term refers to an AI capable of learning and performing an intellectual task once reserved for humans. Unlike today’s specialized AIs, which can only excel at a specific task, its broader understanding of the world is akin to that of the human brain.
The predictions of an AI industry mogul
This is not just anyone’s opinion: Goertzel is a prominent figure in the industry who has spent several years developing the concept of general AI.
He holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from Temple University in Pennsylvania, and has contributed to various fields such as AI, cognitive science and complex systems. Since 2010, he has been President of Humanity+ and Vice-President of the Artificial General Intelligence Society.
More recently, in 2017, he co-founded the company SingularityNET alongside David Hanson of Hanson Robotics: the creator of the humanoid robots Sophia, Grace and Desdemona.
A global revolution with tragic consequences?
In his view, the development of an AGI is guided by the same force that led to the greatest human advances such as the transition from hunting and gathering to an agricultural society. But these great changes rarely take place without great loss…
The expert asks: “ why did we develop agriculture, villages and cities instead of continuing to live in the Stone Age? According to certain metrics, life has certainly improved since then “.
However, “ by other metrics, life has gotten worse. It there were no neuroses and mental illnesses as there are today “.
What is the real purpose of creating an AGI?
According to him, the other factor stimulating the development of AI is humanity’s impatience. In any case, although this development seems to be based on individual motivations, it is in fact tending towards a higher goal.
As he points out initial raison d’être of AI was national defense since the army financed it from the 1950s until the end of the 20th century.
From now on, the main goal seems to be “ make money for companies “but also ” from giving artists and musicians cool tools to play with “.
In an interview in August 2023, SingularityNet COO Janet Adams stated that the company’s vision was to move towards a singularity”. positive and beneficial for all humankind “.
Among the companies involved in the creation of an AGIinclude OpenAI. Its CEO, Sam Altman, has just confirmed that he is working on GPT-5, which could be the first ” super artificial intelligence “.
This is also the case for the company xAI created in July 2023 by Elon Musk. Its first chatbot, Grok, has just entered the public test phase.
link grok According to the famous American entrepreneur, “ xAI’s goal is to create good general artificial intelligence with the ambition of understanding the universe “. This is why he wants to create an AI whose curiosity and thirst for truth are pushed to the limit…