OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever spoke on a range of topics at NeurIPS, the annual AI conference, Friday afternoon before accepting an award for his contributions to the field. Sutskever gave his predictions for “superintelligent AI” — AI more capable than humans at many tasks, which he believes will be achieved at some point. Superintelligent AI […]
Since the dawn of the generative AI era a few years ago, the march of technology—toward what tech companies hope will replace human intellectual labor—has continuously sparked angst about the future role humans will play in the job market. Will we all be replaced by machines?
A Y-Combinator-backed company called Artisan, which sells customer service and sales workflow software, recently launched a provocative billboard campaign in San Francisco playing on that angst, reports Gizmodo. It features the slogan "Stop Hiring Humans." The company markets its software products as "AI Employees" or "Artisans."
The company's billboards feature messages that might inspire nightmares among workers, like "Artisans won't complain about work-life balance" and "The era of AI employees is here." And they're on display to the same human workforce the ads suggest replacing.
When AGI arrives, most won't even realize it, some AI experts say. Others say it's already here.
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Some say OpenAI's o1 models are close to artificial general intelligence.
o1 outperforms humans in certain tasks, especially in science, math, or coding.
Most people won't notice when AGI ultimately arrives, some AI experts say.
AI is advancing rapidly, but most people might not immediately notice its impact on their lives.
Take OpenAI's latest o1 models, which the company officially released on Thursday as part of its Shipmas campaign. OpenAI says these models are "designed to spend more time thinking before they respond."
Some say o1 shows how we might reach artificial general intelligence — a still theoretical form of AI that meets or surpasses human intelligence — without realizing it.
"Models like o1 suggest that people won't generally notice AGI-ish systems that are better than humans at most intellectual tasks, but which are not autonomous or self-directed," Wharton professor and AI expert Ethan Mollick wrote in a post on X. "Most folks don't have a lot of tasks that bump up against limits of human intelligence, so won't see it."
Artificial general intelligence has been broadly defined as anything between "god-like intelligence" and a more modest "machine that can do any task better than a human," Mollick wrote in a May post on his Substack, One Useful Thing.
He said that humans can better understand whether they're encountering AGI by breaking its development into tiers, in which the ultimate tier, Tier 1, is a machine capable of performing any task better than a human. Tier 2, or "Weak AGI," he wrote, are machines that outperform average human experts at all tasks in specific jobs — though no such systems currently exist. Tier 3, or "Artificial Focused Intelligence," is an AI that outperforms average human experts in specific, intellectually demanding tasks. While Tier 4, "Co-intelligence," is the result of humans and AI working together.
Some in the AI industry believe we've already reached AGI, even if we haven't realized it.
"In my opinion, we have already achieved AGI and it's even more clear with o1. We have not achieved 'better than any human at any task,' but what we have is 'better than most humans at most tasks,'" Vahid Kazemi, a member of OpenAI's technical staff, wrote in a post on X on Friday.
More conservative AI experts say o1 is just a step along the journey to AGI.
"The idea somehow which, you know, is popularized by science fiction and Hollywood that, you know, somehow somebody is going to discover the secret, the secret to AGI, or human-level AI, or AMI, whatever you want to call it. And then, you know, turn on a machine, and then we have AGI. That's just not going to happen," Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, said on Lex Fridman's podcast in March. "It's not going to be an event. It's going to be gradual progress."
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks artificial general intelligence, or AGI, will be achieved "sooner than most people in the world think."
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OpenAI is reportedly looking into dropping a key clause from its multibillion-dollar Microsoft deal.
The clause ends Microsoft's access to OpenAI's advanced models when OpenAI achieves AGI.
It's meant to prevent misuse of AGI for commercial ends; nixing it could encourage more investment.
OpenAI is reportedly considering removing a clause from its contract with Microsoft in a move that could help it attract further investment from the tech giant.
Citing people with knowledge of the discussions, the Financial Times reported Friday that the ChatGPT maker was weighing whether to eliminate a clause that closes off Microsoft's access to its most advanced AI models when the startup achieves artificial general intelligence, or AGI.
OpenAI's website defines AGI as "a highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work," adding that it's "explicitly carved out of all commercial and IP licensing agreements."
The clause is meant to prevent AGI from being misused for commercial purposes. The Financial Times noted that removing it could encourage Microsoft to keep cash flowing to the AI company. Microsoft has invested at least $13 billion in OpenAI.
OpenAI's website says its nonprofit board will both decide when AGI is achieved and take ownership of the technology.
The report said that OpenAI's board was still discussing options and no decision had been made.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman remains bullish that the company will achieve AGI in the near future.
"My guess is we will hit AGI sooner than most people in the world think and it will matter much less," he said at The New York Times' DealBook Summit this week.
Altman also touched on the company's financial needs.
"When we started, we had no idea we were going to be a product company or that the capital we needed would turn out to be so huge," he said. "If we knew those things, we would have picked a different structure."
Reuters reported in September, citing sources familiar with the matter, that OpenAI was working on plans to restructure to a for-profit benefit corporation that would no longer be controlled by its nonprofit board and that would give Altman equity in the business for the first time.
According to the Financial Times, OpenAI is considering ditching a provision that would shut Microsoft, a major partner and investor, out of its most advanced technology when OpenAI achieves artificial general intelligence (AGI). Exactly when OpenAI creates AGI, which the startup defines as “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work,” is […]
