Every tech baron worth their Patagonia vest is talking about AGI these days albeit with mixed feelings.
Some await our robot overlords with rapturous excitement; others anticipate a digital apocalypse.
DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis defines it as human-level cognition and his opinion carries weight.
Hassabis has made the London-based DeepMind one of the worlds leadingAIlabs, with building AGI as its core mission.
The progress has been pretty incredible.
This week, the former chess prodigy and video game pioneer revealed his own expectations on AGIs arrival.
I dont see any reason why that progress is going to slow down.
I think it may even accelerate.
So I think we could be just a few years, maybe within a decade away.
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Hes left some wiggle room, yet clearly doesnt consider AGI a distant prospect.
But what about his fellow tech luminaries?
Heres what they predict.
In the wake of his departure, Hinton made a fresh prediction on when AI will surpass human intelligence.
Ominously, thedeep learninglegend dramaticallyaccelerated his original forecast of 30-50 years.
I now predict five to 20 years but without much confidence, he said on Twitter.
We live in very uncertain times.
Its possible that I am totally wrong about digital intelligence overtaking us.
Nobody really knows which is why we should worry now.
I now predict 5 to 20 years but without much confidence.
We live in very uncertain times.
It’s possible that I am totally wrong about digital intelligence overtaking us.
Nobody really knows which is why we should worry now.
By 2029, computers will have human-level intelligence, he said.
Today, thats not just a future scenario.
Its here, in part, and its going to accelerate.
Hes also prone to bold pronouncements about technologys future.At a conference in 2018, he added a couple more.
I dont think we need fundamentally new algorithms, he said.
I think we do need to connect our algorithms in different ways than we do now.
If Im right, then we already have the core algorithms that we need…
I believe we are less than ten years from creating human-level AI.
Before you flee to the bomb shelter, its worth noting that Goertzel isnt the most sincere forecaster.
It will occur on December 8, 2026, which will be my 60thbirthday, he added.
I will delay it until then just to have a great birthday party.
When it comes to tech predictions, Schmidhuber is looking beyond AGI and towards the singularity.
Broadly, this refers to a time when AI becomes so uncontrollably advanced that it irreversibly changes humanity.
What could possibly go wrong?
Regardless, hes sceptical about predictions for its advent.
TheNobel Prize-winneronce went so far as to estimate that AGI would arrive by1985.
Story byThomas Macaulay
Thomas is the managing editor of TNW.
He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers.
Away from work, he e(show all)Thomas is the managing editor of TNW.
He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers.
Away from work, he enjoys playing chess (badly) and the guitar (even worse).
