Semantics fogged up the windshield. We can’t see the AI revolution clearly. “Word Thinking” makes us nitpick definitions instead of addressing the substance of concepts. Issues, and arguments. (Scott Adams coined the term.) For example:
A bear charges at you from 500 yards away. Are you in imminent danger?
Depends on your definition of “imminent”.
HERE ARE THE OFFICIAL DEFINITIONS FOR AI CONCEPTS*
1. Turing Test ✅: “A human being should be unable to distinguish the machine from another human.” This already happened.
1.b. Steve’s Corollary: An AI “passes with honors” if it looks non-human by being even more accurate, knowledgeable and articulate.
2. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) ✅: AI that can understand, learn, and apply intelligence to solve MANY intellectual tasks about as well as a human can, exhibiting versatility and cross-domain reasoning. This was achieved recently by several models.
2.b. Steve’s Corollary: “General” does not have to mean “universal”. There is no need to match humans in ALL or even MOST domains. (That’s how influencers tried to move the goalposts to avoid acknowledging AGI’s arrival.)
Reality: Computers already do some things WAY BETTER than humans. AGI and human intelligence have SOME overlap in the Venn diagram. AGI is complementary to human intelligence.
3. Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) 🔲: An intellect that significantly exceeds the cognitive performance of the best human minds in most fields, including creativity, general wisdom, and problem-solving. ASI is not here yet.
4. Real-World AI ✅: Applying AI to offline problems. The solutions drive actions in the physical world (vs purely digital inputs/outputs such as text, code or video): Medical diagnostics that lead to treatments. Maps that give turn by turn directions. Augmented reality that identifies objects in your VR glasses. Real-world AI kicked off long before LLM’s arrived, but LLM’s are turbo-charging capabilities.
5. Physical AI✅: Systems that operate in 3D space and move things. Self-driving cars. Autonomous humanoids. Drones. Notable names are Waymo, Tesla, BYD… Internally at Amazon…
NOTE: The checkbox ✅ does NOT mean the work is done. A 5th grader can speak a language “fluently”… But she will be much better after an MFA degree and a few successful novels and screenplays.
Similarly, self-driving cars should be 100x better in 10 years than today…
Models will continue to get more intelligent and more generalized over time….
And physical AI will go from “can do chores in a home” to “can perform brain surgery and always win gold in every Olympic event”.
*Source: I just made up these definitions
For great insights on AI… Written 11 years ago… Tim Urban’s Wait But Why is the place to go:
Part 1: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html
Part 2: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-2.html