The computer scientist and CEO who popularized the term “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) believes AI is on the verge of an exponential “intelligence explosion.”
Mathematics PhD and futurist Ben Goertzel made the prediction while closing a summit on AGI this month: “It seems quite plausible that we could get to human-level AGI within, say, the next three to eight years.”
“Once you get to the human level of AGI,” added Goertzel, sometimes called the “father of AGI,” “in a few years you could get radically superhuman AGI.”
While the futurist admitted he “could be wrong,” he went on to predict that the only impediment to a runaway, ultra-advanced AI (far more advanced than its human creators) would be if the robot’s “own conservatism” advised caution.
Mathematician and futurist Ben Goertzel made the prediction while closing a summit on AGI last week: “we could reach human-level AGI within, say, the next three to eight years.”
Goertzel made his predictions in Panama City, Panama, during his closing speech at the Beneficial AI Summit 2024, which is partially sponsored by his firm SingularityNET.
Goertzel made his predictions during your final comments last week at the ‘2024 Beneficial AI Summit and Unconference’, partially sponsored by his own firm SingularityNET, where he is CEO.
‘There are known unknowns and probably unknown unknowns,’ Goertzel acknowledged during his talk at the event, held this year in Panama City, Panama.
«No one has yet created a human-level artificial general intelligence (AGI); No one has a solid understanding of when we’re going to get there.’
Goertzel has been researching what he calls artificial superintelligence (ASI), which he defines as AI so advanced that it equals all the brain and computing power of human civilization combined.
But unless the processing capacity, in Goertzel’s words, Requiring a ‘quantum computer with a million qubits or something’, an exponential escalation of AI seemed inevitable to him.
“My own opinion is that once you reach human-level AGI, within a few years you could get radically superhuman AGI,” he said.
In recent years, Goertzel has been researching a concept he calls ‘“Artificial superintelligence” (ASI), which he defines as an AI so advanced that it matches all the brain and computing power of human civilization.
Goertzel listed “three lines of converging evidence” that he said support his thesis.
First, he cited the updated work of futurist and computer scientist Ray Kurzweil, a long-time Google resident, who has developed a predictive model that suggests AGI will be achievable by 2029.
Kurzweil’s idea, which will be further detailed in his upcoming book ‘The Singularity Is Closer’, drew on data documenting the exponential nature of technological growth within other technology sectors to help inform his analysis.
Goertzel then cited all the well-known recent improvements made to so-called large language models (LLMs) in recent years, which he noted have “woken up much of the world to the potential of AI.”
Goertzel is perhaps best known for his work on Sophia the Robot, the first robot to be granted legal citizenship. Goertzel (right) has toured Sophia (left) as part of SingularityNET’s push to create a new online space for sharing AI algorithms.
Finally, the computer scientist, wearing his trademark leopard-print hat, turned to his own infrastructure research designed to combine various types of AI infrastructure, which he calls ‘OpenCog Hyperon.’
The new infrastructure would combine more mature AI, such as LLMs, and new forms of AI that could focus on other areas of cognitive reasoning beyond language, whether mathematics, physics or philosophy, to help create a more complete true AGI.
‘OpenCog Hyperon’ by Goertzel. has garnered support and interest from others in the AI space, including Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) which hosted an article he co-wrote with Databricks CTO Matei Zaharia and others last month.
This isn’t the first potentially dire or unquestionably bold prediction about AI that Goertzel has made in recent years.
In May 2023, the futurist said AI has the potential to replace 80 percent of human jobs “in the coming years.”
“Virtually all jobs that involve paperwork,” he said at the Web Summit in Rio de Janeiro that month, “should be automatable.”
Goertzel added that he did not see this as a negative, stating that it would allow people to “find better things to do with their lives than working for a living.”
That same month, he also told the site futurism: ‘I have taken drugs with an AI, if by that we mean that I have taken drugs and then interacted with an AI.’
The “psychedelic” practice, part of his work on “algorithmic musical composition” in the 1990s, is just one of many eccentric episodes in Goertzel’s history.
The self-described panpsychist, who has said he believes that even “a cup of coffee has its own level of consciousness,” has suggested that researchers look into creating a “benign superintelligence.’
Goertzel has also proposed a AI-based cryptocurrency rating agency Able to identify scam tokens and coins.
But perhaps the futuristic computer scientist is best known for his work on Sophia the Robot, the first robot to be granted legal citizenship.