Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, has become a much-abused buzzword in the AI industry. Now, Google DeepMind wants to put the idea on a firmer footing.
The concept at the heart of the term AGI is that a hallmark of human intelligence is its generality. While specialist computer programs might easily outperform us at picking stocks or translating French to German, our superpower is the fact we can learn to do both.
Recreating this kind of flexibility in machines is the holy grail for many AI researchers, and is often speculated to be the first step towards artificial superintelligence. But what exactly people mean by AGI is rarely specified, and the idea is frequently described in binary terms, where AGI represents a piece of software that has crossed some mythical boundary, and once on the other side, it’s on par with humans.
Comments are closed.