Long Before AGI: Three AI Milestones That Will Challenge You
SUQIAN, CHINA - MARCH 4, 2024 - Illustration Musk says GPT4 is AGI, Suqian, Jiangsu province, China, ... More March 4, 2024. (Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images) Future Publishing via Getty Images
The increasing talk of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has led many to ponder what will occur when AI surpasses human intelligence. Whether this moment is near or far depends on who you ask, but I would argue it is not the most relevant milestone we should be aware of. What are the important earlier AI milestones that will affect every human being, and which ones have already been reached? Here are three that I would argue are already upon us.
AI Surpasses Human Weakness
In the 2022 movie 'The Social Dilemma', Tristan Harris of The Center for Humane Technology pointed out that AI has already surpassed human weakness. What does this mean? It means that AI can already apply patterns of human psychology and human behavior to generate cues that trigger desired outcomes. Does this mean that AI understands psychology? No. It simply means that enough data exists on human behavior, concerning responses to cues, that AI programs can generate inputs that are probabilistically likely to cause humans to react in desired ways. This aspect of AI is already well in place in everything from online marketing to social media.
AI Changes The Job Market
AI is expected to have a fundamental impact on the workforce. This impact is already underway, with companies reporting intentions to restrict their human workforce and drive AI leverage for productivity, to new jobs emerging as a result of new AI-driven industries or AI adoption by existing industries. While the potential workforce impact of AGI is likely greater, it is worth noting that most jobs require specialized skills and knowledge. AIs that are capable of mimicking these skills, and regurgitating this knowledge in useful forms - such as emails, written reports and answers to questions, can easily reduce the number of required humans for a task, long before AGI comes to effect.
AI Changes Human Education
In my opinion, this is by far the most impactful of pre-AGI AI changes. AI has already exceeded many human students in standard tests, ranging from high school Advanced Placement exams to the US Medical Licensing Exam. These data points suggest that what humans need to learn in the age of AI, or at the very least how we assess human intelligence, needs to be revisited. To further complicate this situation, AI tutors are emerging, with a school of thought that AI may be a suitable or even preferred teacher for certain human learners. This development should cause us to seriously consider the value of human engagement in human learning, and articulate it much more crisply than we have been required to do before. Otherwise, there is a risk that learners will be stratified, with the most fortunate receiving both AI and human guidance, and the less resourced having to rely on AI guidance alone.
Back To The Singularity - What about AGI?
Given the magniture of the impacts already occuring with AI, what can we expect AGI to do? My personal view is that theGeneral in AGI implies that AIs that are closer to AGI will have a greater ability to bridge domains, and bridge modalities (such as voice, video, etc.). As such AGI can be expected to complete with humans on much more complex tasks than AI does today. Looking at the above three challenges, one can imagine that AGI will exacerbate them all from a human perspective, creating new technologies that can exploit human weakness, new job roles that AI can fill, and greater difficulties in crisply identifying the role of humans in human education.
What Should You Do?
I see AGI as a process and not a binary event. As the above examples show, there will be intermediate events with significant impact. Since AGI has no universally agreed-upon definition, we may also never agree on whether it was been reached. As such, the best way, in my view, to prepare for AGI is to understand the challenges and opportunities that AI already presents, and 'surf the wave', adapting to new developments as they occur. This requires building AI skills as they are relevant to your professional role, staying aware of new AI developments in your domain, and adapting your skills as AI evolves.
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