How AI could disrupt the world even more than electricity or the internet

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Countries and companies are racing ahead with generative AI that tech entrepreneurs believe will fundamentally change society.

The rise of AI, now seen as inevitable in Silicon Valley, will bring about change that is “orders of magnitude” greater than anything the world has ever seen, observers say. But are we ready?

AGI, defined as AI with human cognitive capabilities, as opposed to narrower AI, like the headline-grabbing ChatGPT, could free people from menial tasks and usher in a new era of creativity.

But such a historic paradigm shift could also threaten jobs and raise insurmountable social problems, experts warn.

Previous technological advances from electricity to the Internet have sparked powerful social change, says Siqi Chen, managing director of San Francisco-based startup Runway.

“But what we’re looking at now is intelligence itself… This is the first time we’ve been able to create intelligence itself and increase its amount in the universe,” he told AFP.

The change, as a result, will be “orders of magnitude greater than any other technological change we have ever had in history”.

And such an exciting and scary change is “a double-edged sword,” Chen said, envisioning using AGI to address climate change, for example, but also warning that it’s a tool we want to be as “drivable possible”.

It was the release of ChatGPT late last year that brought the long dreamed idea of ​​AGI one giant step closer to reality.

OpenAI, the company behind the generative software that churn out essays, poetry and computational code on command, this week released an even more powerful version of the technology that powers it: GPT-4.

He says the technology will not only be able to process text but also images and produce more complex content such as legal complaints or video games.

As such, it “shows human-level performance” on some benchmarks, the company said.

Goodbye to “fatigue”

The success of OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, has sparked something of an arms race in Silicon Valley as tech giants look to push their generative AI tools to the next level, though they remain wary of chatbots going off the rails. from the rails.

AI-powered digital assistants from Microsoft and Google can already summarize meetings, draft emails, build websites, run advertising campaigns and more, giving us an idea of ​​what AGI will be able to do in the future.

“We spend too much time consumed by drudgery,” said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president at Microsoft.

With artificial intelligence, Spataro wants to “rediscover the soul of work,” he said Thursday during a Microsoft presentation.

AI can also reduce costs, some suggest.

British landscape architect Joe Perkins tweeted that he used GPT-4 for a coding project, which a “very good” developer told him would cost £5,000 ($6,000) and take two weeks.

“GPT-4 delivered the same in 3 hours, for $0.11,” he tweeted. “Truly astounding.”

But that raises the question of the threat to human jobs, with entrepreneur Chen acknowledging that technology could one day build a startup like his, or an even better version.

“How am I going to make a living and not be homeless?” she asked, adding that she was counting on solutions to emerge.

Existential questions

The ubiquitous AI also puts a question mark on creative authenticity as songs, images, art and more are churned out by software instead of people.

Will humans eschew education, instead relying on software to do the thinking for them?

And who can be trusted to make AI unbiased, accurate, and adaptable to different countries and cultures?

AGI is “probably getting there faster than we can process,” says Sharon Zhou, co-founder of a generative AI company.

The technology raises an existential question for humanity, he told AFP.

“If there is going to be something more powerful than us and smarter than us, what does that mean for us?” Zhou asked.

“And do we harness him? Or does he harness us?”

OpenAI says it plans to build AGI gradually with the goal of benefiting all mankind, but has admitted the software has security flaws.

Security is a “process,” OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever said in an interview with MIT Technology Review, adding that it would be “highly desirable” for companies to “find some kind of process that allows for slower model releases.” with these completely unprecedented capabilities.”

But for now, Zhou says, slowing down is not part of the ethos.

“The power is concentrated around those who can build these things. And they make the decisions around that, and they’re prone to move fast,” he says.

The international order itself may be at stake, he suggests.

“The pressure between the United States and China has been immense,” Zhou says, adding that the race for artificial intelligence harks back to the Cold War era.

“There’s definitely a risk with AGI that if one country figures it out faster, it’s going to dominate?” she asks.

“And so I think the fear is, don’t stop because we can’t lose.”

© 2023 AFP

Quote: How AI Could Upend the World Even More Than Electricity or the Internet (2023, Mar 19) Retrieved March 19, 2023 from https://techxplore.com/news/2023-03-ai-upend-world -electricity-internet. html

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