Lakhasly

Will AI ever reach human-level
intelligence? We asked five experts
Image: Shutterstock
In summary
Interviewed in The Conversation, Lecturer in AI and Data Science, Dr Dana Rezazadegan
Artificial intelligence has changed form in recent years.
What started in the public eye as a burgeoning field with promising (yet largely benign)
applications, has snowballed into a more than US$100 billion industry where the heavy hitters –
Microsoft, Google and OpenAI, to name a few – seem intent on out-competing one another.
The result has been increasingly sophisticated large language models, often released in haste and
without adequate testing and oversight.
These models can do much of what a human can, and in many cases do it better. They can beat
us at advanced strategy games, generate incredible art, diagnose cancers and compose music.
There’s no doubt AI systems appear to be “intelligent” to some extent. But could they ever be as
intelligent as humans?
There’s a term for this: artificial general intelligence (AGI). Although it’s a broad concept, for
simplicity you can think of AGI as the point at which AI acquires human-like generalised
cognitive capabilities. In other words, it’s the point where AI can tackle any intellectual task a
human can.
AGI isn’t here yet; current AI models are held back by a lack of certain human traits such as true
creativity and emotional awareness.
We asked five experts if they think AI will ever reach AGI, and five out of five said yes.
But there are subtle differences in how they approach the question. From their responses, more
questions emerge. When might we achieve AGI? Will it go on to surpass humans? And what
constitutes “intelligence”, anyway?
Here are their detailed responses:
AI has already achieved and surpassed human intelligence in many tasks. It can beat us at
strategy games such as Go, chess, StarCraft and Diplomacy, outperform us on many language
performance benchmarks, and write passable undergraduate university essays.
Of course, it can also make things up, or “hallucinate”, and get things wrong – but so can
humans (although not in the same ways).
Given a long enough timescale, it seems likely AI will achieve AGI, or “human-level
intelligence”. That is, it will have achieved proficiency across enough of the interconnected
domains of intelligence humans possess. Still, some may worry that – despite AI achievements
so far – AI will not really be “intelligent” because it doesn’t (or can’t) understand what it’s
doing, since it isn’t conscious.
However, the rise of AI suggests we can have intelligence without consciousness, because
intelligence can be understood in functional terms. An intelligent entity can do intelligent things
such as learn, reason, write essays, or use tools.
The AIs we create may never have consciousness, but they are increasingly able to do intelligent
things. In some cases, they already do them at a level beyond us, which is a trend that will likely
continue.
AI will achieve human-level intelligence, but perhaps not anytime soon. Human-level
intelligence allows us to reason, solve problems and make decisions. It requires many cognitive
abilities including adaptability, social intelligence and learning from experience.
AI already ticks many of these boxes. What’s left is for AI models to learn inherent human traits
such as critical reasoning, and understanding what emotion is and which events might prompt it.
As humans, we learn and experience these traits from the moment we’re born. Our first
experience of “happiness” is too early for us to even remember. We also learn critical reasoning
and emotional regulation throughout childhood, and develop a sense of our “emotions” as we
interact with and experience the world around us. Importantly, it can take many years for the
human brain to develop such intelligence.
AI hasn’t acquired these capabilities yet. But if humans can learn these traits, AI probably can
too – and maybe at an even faster rate. We are still discovering how AI models should be built,
trained, and interacted with in order to develop such traits in them. Really, the big question is not
if AI will achieve human-level intelligence, but when – and how.
I believe AI will surpass human intelligence. Why? The past offers insights we can't ignore. A
lot of people believed tasks such as playing computer games, image recognition and content
creation (among others) could only be done by humans – but technological advancement proved
otherwise.
Today the rapid advancement and adoption of AI algorithms, in conjunction with an abundance
of data and computational resources, has led to a level of intelligence and automation previously
unimaginable. If we follow the same trajectory, having more generalised AI is no longer a
possibility, but a certainty of the future.
It is just a matter of time. AI has advanced significantly, but not yet in tasks requiring intuition,
empathy and creativity, for example. But breakthroughs in algorithms will allow this.
Moreover, once AI systems achieve such human-like cognitive abilities, there will be a snowball
effect and AI systems will be able to improve themselves with minimal to no human
involvement. This kind of “automation of intelligence” will profoundly change the world.
Artificial general intelligence remains a significant challenge, and there are ethical and societal
implications that must be addressed very carefully as we continue to advance towards it.
Yes, AI is going to get as smart as humans in many ways – but exactly how smart it gets will be
decided largely by advancements in quantum computing.
Human intelligence isn’t as simple as knowing facts. It has several aspects such as creativity,
emotional intelligence and intuition, which current AI models can mimic, but can’t match. That
said, AI has advanced massively and this trend will continue.
Current models are limited by relatively small and biased training datasets, as well as limited
computational power. The emergence of quantum computing will transform AI’s capabilities.
With quantum-enhanced AI, we’ll be able to feed AI models multiple massive datasets that are
comparable to humans’ natural multi-modal data collection achieved through interacting with the
world. These models will be able to maintain fast and accurate analyses.
Having an advanced version of continual learning should lead to the development of highly
sophisticated AI systems which, after a certain point, will be able to improve themselves without
human input.
As such, AI algorithms running on stable quantum computers have a high chance of reaching
something similar to generalised human intelligence – even if they don’t necessarily match every
aspect of human intelligence as we know it.
I think it’s likely AGI will one day become a reality, although the timeline remains highly
uncertain. If AGI is developed, then surpassing human-level intelligence seems inevitable.
Humans themselves are proof that highly flexible and adaptable intelligence is allowed by the
laws of physics. There’s no fundamental reason we should believe that machines are, in
principle, incapable of performing the computations necessary to achieve human-like problem
solving abilities.
Furthermore, AI has distinct advantages over humans, such as better speed and memory capacity,
fewer physical constraints, and the potential for more rationality and recursive self-improvement.
As computational power grows, AI systems will eventually surpass the human brain’s
computational capacity.
Our primary challenge then is to gain a better understanding of intelligence itself, and knowledge
on how to build AGI. Present-day AI systems have many limitations and are nowhere near being
able to master the different domains that would characterise AGI. The path to AGI will likely
require unpredictable breakthroughs and innovations.
The median predicted date for AGI on Metaculus, a well-regarded forecasting platform, is 2032.
To me, this seems too optimistic. A 2022 expert survey estimated a 50% chance of us achieving
human-level AI by 2059. I find this plausible.
This article was originally published on The Conversation.