DailyPost 2962
SAM ALTMAN – THE PROPHETIC AGI
Sam Altman is the running poster of the AI. Whatever might be the current status of Artificial Intelligence, AI, there is no denying the fact that there is much more to the story than what Sam would like us to believe. With the two Nobel Prizes going to the doyens of the AI world, the point that there are many more personas who would decide the fate of AI has become crystal clear. The landmark milestones in this technology and rolling out of products thereof by various IT behemoths has literally put the world on fire. OpenAI is undeniably one of the players yet its claim to the first mover advantage cannot be denied.
The first mover advantage cannot be the final arbiter of the winner of the AI race. Notwithstanding, what all has been achieved in this field and what is on the cards is only one part of the story, the other and the more fascinating part of the story is when will Artificial General Intelligence, AGI, become a reality? Sam Altman being the current prophet of AI, as expected, has been airing his views on when the AGI will become a reality. His humongous $7 trillion AI fund scouting seems to have ended in a whimper. A man impregnated with ideas, having tasted blood, cannot stay quiet.
The current headline making statement by him is fascinating to say the least. “Achievable with the current hardware,” is what he says. Everybody is flabbergasted as to what does that mean? Is he talking about the current hardware of OpenAI or that of all the leading IT behemoths? OpenAI’s number one priority is to reach a threshold where AI surpasses human capabilities, what we call AGI. The timeline for AGI becoming a reality remains a top bone of contention. It ranges from years to the large part of the decade. Another line of thinking is that the current trajectory of machine learning has reached a dead end, so it will never reach there.
The other challenge is that the exact definition of AGI still remains heavily debated. The billions of dollars invested in datacenters to train AI models are still many years from paying off. The story of Elon Musk’s fully driverless car, can be treated as an analogy. Elon admitted this month that even the latest generation of Tesla’s hardware may not be sufficient to enable an “unsupervised” version of the company’s so-called “Full Self-Driving software.” When we talk of AGI, it is difficult to fathom out the scale of hardware today. Sam Altman’s statement is more of a promise than anything else which can do wonders to his company’s valuation and the continued enthusiasm from investors.
AGI EVEN TODAY IS MORE OF A PIPEDREAM.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.