Author: Stephen Johnson / Source: Big Think
- Human-like AI, or artificial general intelligence (AGI), would occur when a machine can perform any cognitive task that a human can.
- Although computers can outperform us in some narrow tasks, no one AI can outperform humans on a wide variety of general cognitive tasks.
- Not all experts believe we’re close to AGI. But most agree the field has been making significant progress, especially in recent years.
Artificial intelligence is integral to daily life in the developed world. We use AI when we order an Uber, sift through our email account’s spam folder, or browse our news feeds. Beyond the world of apps, we can see dazzling examples of AI beating Go and chess masters, composing music, and identifying diseases in patients where human doctors found none.
But these are examples of weak AI, not strong AI, which is also called artificial general intelligence (AGI). An AGI is a machine that can perform any cognitive task that a human can.
AGI has long been a primary goal of AI researchers. It’s the subject of countless works of science fiction, such as HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Ava in Ex Machina, and the development of an AGI would likely result in a computer that could finally pass the Turing test, in which a computer must prove its intelligence is equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, a human.
So, will we ever see AGI? If so, when?
A surprising survey
The answer is yes and within five to 10 years, according to 37% of respondents to a survey issued at the Joint Multi-Conference on Human-Level Artificial Intelligence (HLAI) held last month in Prague.
The survey, which was conducted by the AI startup SingularityNET and the AI research and development company GoodAI, found that 28% expected it within the next two decades while just 2% didn’t believe humans will ever…
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