We may not have reached artificial general intelligence (AGI) yet, but as one of the leading experts in the theoretical field claims, it may get here sooner rather than later.
During his closing remarks at this year’s Beneficial AGI Summit in Panama, computer scientist and haberdashery enthusiast Ben Goertzel said that although people most likely won’t build human-level or superhuman AI until 2029 or 2030, there’s a chance it could happen as soon as 2027.
After that, the SingularityNET founder said, AGI could then evolve rapidly into artificial superintelligence (ASI), which he defines as an AI with all the combined knowledge of human civilization.
“No one has created human-level artificial general intelligence yet; nobody has a solid knowledge of when we’re going to get there,” Goertzel told the conference audience. “I mean, there are known unknowns and probably unknown unknowns.”
“On the other hand, to me it seems quite plausible we could get to human-level AGI within, let’s say, the next three to eight years,” he added.
To be fair, Goertzel is far from alone in attempting to predict when AGI will be achieved.
Last fall, for instance, Google DeepMind co-founder Shane Legg reiterated his more than decade-old prediction that there’s a 50/50 chance that humans invent AGI by the year 2028. In a tweet from May of last year, “AI godfather” and ex-Googler Geoffrey Hinton said he now predicts, “without much confidence,” that AGI is five to 20 years away.