A narrative that artificial intelligence will soon surpass humans in various tasks and will take some jobs away has been debunked by two tech industry heavyweights. Microsoft president Brad Smith and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang have said that it will take many years for the technology to even compete with humans.
‘No probability…’: Smith
Smith said there is no chance of super-intelligent artificial intelligence being created within the next 12 months and said that the technology could be decades away.
He was referring to OpenAI’s internal project named Q* (pronounced Q-Star) that led to the company CEO Sam Altman’s ouster last month. It was reported that the breakthrough, which is defined as artificial general intelligence (AGI), can surpass humans in most economically valuable tasks.
“There’s absolutely no probability that you’re going to see this so-called AGI, where computers are more powerful than people, in the next 12 months. It’s going to take years, if not many decades, but I still think the time to focus on safety is now,” he said.
He pointed out that the tech industry needs ‘safety brakes’ just like there are in an elevator so that AI systems always remain under human control.
AI will be fairly competitive, says Nvidia CEO
Similar thoughts were shared by the Nvidia CEO who said that AI will be ‘fairly competitive’ with humans in five years. Huang highlighted that if AGI can complete tests in a “fairly competitive” way to human intelligence, then “within the next five years, you’re going to see, obviously, AIs that can achieve those tests.”
Huang said that back in 2018, he delivered the world’s first AI supercomputer to OpenAI after Elon Musk, who was then associated with the company, said, “I want one of those.”
Nvidia’s business saw a boom due to the surge in demand for high-powered GPUs that are needed to train AI models and run workloads.