Q: How real is the threat of artificial general intelligence — and what risks demand our attention today?
Paul Dongha: “Artificial general intelligence, which is about AI approaching human-level intelligence, has been the holy grail of AI research for decades. We’re not there yet. Many aspects of human intelligence — social interactions, emotional intelligence, even elements of computer vision — are things the current generation of AI is simply incapable of.
“The recent transformer-based technologies look extremely sophisticated, but when you open the hood and examine how they operate, they do not work in the way humans think or behave. I don’t believe we’re anywhere near achieving AGI and in fact the current approaches are unlikely to get us there.
“So my message is that there’s no need to be worried about any imminent superintelligence or Terminator situation. But we do need to be aware that, in the future, it’s possible. That means we have to guard against it.
