When is AGI coming? These experts have it figured it out.
We’re keeping them honest with the Sherwood News AGI Prediction Tracker.
Can you feel the AGI? It’s coming.
At least that’s what a lot of big names in AI are saying. While there isn’t even an agreed upon definition of what AGI — artificial general intelligence — is, these AI guys are confident enough to say it is going to happen, and they know when (give or take a few years).
The definition of AGI varies widely. OpenAI’s charter defines it as “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work,” while Elon Musk says it’s AI that is “smarter than the smartest human.” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei thinks AGI is more like a “country of geniuses in a datacenter.”
But the core idea is an AI system that is better than humans at most tasks. The trick is, once someone claims to have achieved AGI, it isn’t clear everyone will agree that they have.
And yes, we did look at what many non-male AI experts have been saying about AGI, but most of them aren't making predictions because a lot of them don't think AGI is a thing that will happen.
Dr. Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at The University of Washington, and Dr. Alex Hanna, Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research (DAIR), co-authors of "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want" call out the promises of AGI, and question the true motives of those calling AGI's arrival imminent:
“The term is a vague signifier for a technology that will somehow lead to endless abundance for humankind — and conveniently also a means to avoid accountability as tech moguls make off with billions in capital investment and, more alarmingly, public spending.”
Everyone hedges their bets, and some of the thresholds may be fuzzy, but we’ve been hearing these predictions enough that we felt we needed to track them. From the leaders of Alphabet to Tesla, here’s when the best-known AI thinkers — and those who have the most to gain from the innovation — think AGI is coming.
We’ll keep this tracker updated. Seen one that we’ve missed? Send them our way: keegan@sherwoodmedia.com!
UPDATE (July 16): Added Dr. Alex Hanna to quote attribution.
