Last Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg announced his new goal Aim is to create the call General Artificial Intelligence (AGI, for its English abbreviation). This concept poses a hypothetical scenario in which the capabilities of machines equal or exceed human intelligence. Although theoretical, this idea has become today’s latest and most controversial obsession. Silicon valley.
For decades, humanity has been dreaming of giving life to an agent more intelligent than its creator. This fantasy has been explored in novels and movies. science fictionFrom replicas designed by Philip K. Dick to the Skynet of epic terminator.
In the real world, artificial intelligence It is much more limited. Until now, these systems were designed to solve a problem or carry out a specific task. This is the case with virtual assistants that play music whenever we want, programs that play chess by themselves, or applications that ensure we don’t get lost on the road. This artificial intelligence It is known as narrow or weak.
AGI is a gold mine
what’s the owner Facebook And instagram goes forward. In theory, AGI He will be able to multitask, understand the world around him, and learn to self-educate at an ever-increasing pace. This points to an autonomous machine that, in a sense, can be compared to human knowledge.
Also called Strong Artificial Intelligence, the popularity of this concept has skyrocketed in the past year. Meta added AGI to its priority list, but they’ve done this before OpenAIcreator ChatGPT; research laboratory Contemplation; and ‘start’ anthropic. All three are financed or owned Microsoft, Google And Amazon respectively.
Tech giants have embarked on a race to lead the emerging artificial intelligence market, which they see as a gold mine, investing more and more millions. For example, OpenAI, its most advanced language model, GPT-4this represents a breakthrough towards AGI.
Experts’ doubts
But the development of artificial intelligence is still plagued with questions. Therefore, scientists, philosophers and other experts in this field technology They have not yet reached a consensus on what AGI will be, when it will arrive (if at all), and what will differentiate the machine from the human.
“It is debatable whether general intelligence is similar to human intelligence, whether it is more human, or whether it is a superintelligence from the distant future,” Zuckerberg told specialist media. said. Border. “I don’t have a short one-sentence definition.”
Many other experts are skeptical of this concept. cognitive neuroscientist Gary MarcusFor example, he believes this is an exaggeration by large companies in the industry to attract investment and therefore avoid scrutiny for AI’s negative externalities, such as climate impact or concentration of power, which are already a reality.