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SoftBank Group Corp. CEO Masayoshi Son recently sparked a lot of talk in the tech and AI communities when he said that artificial general intelligence (AGI) — a kind of AI that can do any intellectual task that a human can do — may arrive much sooner than we thought. At the SoftBank World corporate conference, Son said that the progress in AI is accelerating at an unprecedented pace and AGI could be here in the next 10 years.
Son’s comments come as AGI is gaining more attention and investment. Unlike narrow AI which is designed for specific tasks such as image recognition or language translation, AGI can reason, learn and adapt across multiple domains. Experts have traditionally estimated that AGI will take decades to develop but Son’s comment suggests that timeline may be shorter.
Evidence of Acceleration
Son’s optimism is backed by recent breakthroughs in AI research and development. For instance, OpenAI’s GPT-4 released in 2023 showed impressive capabilities in natural language processing, problem solving and even creative tasks such as writing poetry and generating code. According to a report by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, the computational power required to train advanced AI models has doubled every 3.4 months since 2012, a pace that is faster than Moore’s Law. This exponential growth is enabling researchers to tackle more complex challenges and bring AGI closer to reality.
Also, companies like DeepMind and Anthropic are making significant progress in developing AI systems that exhibit generalizable intelligence. DeepMind’s AlphaFold for example has revolutionized the field of biology by accurately predicting protein structures, a task that was considered impossible for machines. These achievements are showing that the gap between narrow AI and AGI is closing faster than we thought.
Society and Industry Implications
The arrival of AGI will have profound impact on various sectors including healthcare, finance and education. In healthcare, AGI can create personalized treatment plans by analyzing huge amount of patient data and medical literature. In finance, it can optimize investment strategies and detect fraud with unprecedented accuracy. In education, AGI can provide customized learning experience for students, adapting to their individual needs and learning styles. But AGI also brings ethical and societal problems. A 2022 report by the Partnership on AI, a group of leading tech companies and research institutions, listed the risks of AGI including job displacement, privacy breaches and misuse by bad actors. It said we need strong regulations to ensure AGI is developed and used responsibly.
Skepticism and Counterarguments
Son’s enthusiastic prediction aside, some experts remain skeptical about the timeline for AGI. Dr. Stuart Russell, a computer science professor at University of California, Berkeley and AI expert, has argued that while narrow AI has made huge progress, AGI requires solving fundamental problems around reasoning, common sense and self-awareness. In a 2023 paper in Nature Machine Intelligence Russell and his colleagues pointed out that current AI systems can’t understand context and causality like humans do – fundamental components of general intelligence.
And a report from the AI Now Institute at New York University warned that the hype around AGI could divert attention and resources from dealing with the immediate risks of existing AI, such as algorithmic bias and misinformation. The report called for a more measured approach to AGI research, with transparency, accountability and public engagement.
Masayoshi Son’s prediction AGI will arrive sooner than expected highlights the speed of progress in AI. His optimism is supported by recent progress, but there’s still a lot of technical and ethical challenges to overcome. As we accelerate towards AGI, we need policymakers, researchers and industry leaders to work together to ensure this technology benefits all of humanity.
The debate around AGI’s timeline is far from over, but one thing is certain – the world is on the verge of a new era of AI and it will touch every aspect of human life.