There’s no question that artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming more intelligent, thanks to software platforms including ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Grok. But does that mean AI agents will one day outdo the generalized smarts that distinguish human intelligence? And if so, is that good or bad for humanity? Those were just a couple of the questions raised during this week’s AGI-24 conference in Seattle.
Conference sessions at the University of Washington centered on a concept known as artificial general intelligence, or AGI. Artificial intelligence can already outperform humans on a growing list of specialized tasks, ranging from playing the game of Go to diagnosing some forms of cancer. But humans are still more intelligent than AI agents when it comes to dealing with a wider range of tasks, including tasks they haven’t been trained to do. That’s what AGI is all about.
David Hanson, a roboticist and artist who’s best known for creating a humanoid robot named Sophia, said the questions surrounding human-level intelligence and consciousness are a high priority for his team at Hanson Robotics.
“The goal really is continuously to explore what it means to be intelligent,” he said during an Aug. 16 session. “How can we achieve consciousness? How can we make machines that co-evolve with humans? All of these efforts, while they’re really cool, and I’m very proud of them, they’re all just trying to get the engine to start on this kind of conscious machine that can co-evolve with humans.”
