The lab as we know it today is being transformed by how we think about medical research and drug discovery, as well as the intersection of artificial intelligence and biotechnology. As someone who has transitioned from a doctor to a tech CEO, I’ve witnessed firsthand how our mindset around medicine and innovation needs to evolve to keep pace with the accelerating changes in technology. In my journey, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is: You can be too smart for your own good. It may sound counterintuitive, but when building a company or investing in new technologies, the smartest people often fall into the trap of overcomplicating things. A brilliant idea isn’t always enough. You need the right people who can think creatively, take risks, and make it happen in the real world. For me, the mindset shift from doctor to CEO was about understanding that it’s not just about medical knowledge; it’s about building the right ecosystem to nurture that knowledge and turn it into real and transformative change. I believe that a crucial part of that ecosystem for my company, Owkin, is a new form of intelligence: a biological artificial superintelligence (BASI) to complement the ingenious human minds working with us. Next generation AI tools, like K Navigator, Owkin’s agentic co-pilot for researchers, and K Pro for pharma, which is in the pipeline, will allow us to understand the full complexity of biology that has been beyond human understanding so far. This forms the backbone of Owkin’s mission: We are creating the next-generation pharma focused on discovering cures and significantly enhancing pipeline value by developing a new intelligence system capable of decoding biological truths at scale. AI can fill the innovation gap left by pharma As the pharmaceutical industry increasingly focuses on a handful of blockbuster drugs, it’s leaving behind many areas of medicine that are crucial for the future of healthcare. Too many diseases remain uncured as traditional pharma struggles to navigate the complexity of biology to augment care with efficient new molecules and diagnostics. From rare diseases to precision oncology, there’s an innovation gap that AI is perfectly positioned to fill. AI can identify previously overlooked opportunities and streamline the development of treatments that are highly personalized and targeted. Unlike traditional pharmaceutical companies that are heavily reliant on large-scale, high-risk projects, AI companies can operate in a more agile, data-driven way. We can make smaller, more informed bets, leveraging machine learning and vast datasets to uncover insights that were once out of reach. This shift enables faster and more efficient drug discovery, with the added benefit of offering solutions for diseases that may not have attracted the attention of big pharma. Cell lines alone aren’t going to work Most traditional biological research has been based on cell lines—cells removed from the human body and grown in petri dishes. But as we look to the future, there’s a growing realization that cell lines, and other traditional research methods, are becoming outdated. While once a staple in biomedical research, they do not accurately replicate the complexity of human biology, and they fail to capture the diversity and variability that exists in real patients. AI-driven models are capable of moving beyond the limitations of cell lines by integrating data both from research done in cells and tissues removed from the body (in vitro) and from research done in living animals (in vivo). This validation approach, which incorporates multiple data types and sources, allows us to create more reliable and predictive models of human diseases. Science is advancing, and so is regulation. The FDA’s recent announcement of plans to phase out animal testing in favor of “more effective, human-relevant methods” means that we are entering an era where therapies can be tested on human tissue models from the very start. In collaboration with leading academic centers, Owkin has developed a patient-derived, lab-grown organoid (a mini version of a human organ), a breakthrough that brings us closer to faster, more accurate, and humane drug discovery. The combination of clinical data, genomic insights, and AI not only accelerates the development of new treatments but also increases their chances of success in clinical trials. The lab of the future The lab of the future will be one where AI is at the center, guiding discovery, improving precision, and increasing efficiency. Validation using real-world data will allow us to make better decisions and achieve higher rates of success. The traditional research process is being upended by these new technologies, and that’s a good thing. The future of medicine will not just rely on human expertise, but on the power of AI and data to transform how we understand and treat disease. AI will deliver transformative therapies at an exponential scale, addressing the complexities of biology that traditional pharmaceutical approaches often cannot solve. Labs will become automated and serve as the ultimate playground for scientists, driving the future of drug discovery by harnessing the full potential of advanced AI systems. In these dynamic labs, organoids and agents will come together to work in synergy, allowing scientists to model and simulate human biology with greater accuracy. AI-driven technology will decipher biological patterns to identify the patients most likely to respond to specific treatments, significantly improving the chances of success in clinical trials and beyond. Seamlessly integrating these cutting-edge tools into the lab environment will transform the way we approach drug discovery, targeting diseases with a level of precision that was previously unimaginable. By pioneering the use of data, biology, and AI to decode the fundamental mechanics of disease and advance medical science, it will be possible to establish a foundation for the future of a “positive singularity” in medicine. Through this innovative ecosystem, AI can revolutionize medicine. The time to innovate is now, and the possibilities are endless. Thomas Clozel is cofounder and CEO of Owkin.

In April, Paul Graham, the founder of the tech startup accelerator Y Combinator, sent a tweet in response to former YC president and current OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Altman had just bid a public goodbye to GPT-4 on X, and Graham had a follow-up question.  “If you had [GPT-4’s model weights] etched on a piece of metal in the most compressed form,” Graham wrote, referring to the values that determine the model’s behavior, “how big would the piece of metal have to be? This is a mostly serious question. These models are history, and by default digital data evaporates.”  There is no question that OpenAI pulled off something historic with its release of ChatGPT 3.5 in 2022. It set in motion an AI arms race that has already changed the world in a number of ways and seems poised to have an even greater long-term effect than the short-term disruptions to things like education and employment that we are already beginning to see. How that turns out for humanity is something we are still reckoning with and may be for quite some time. But a pair of recent books both attempt to get their arms around it with accounts of what two leading technology journalists saw at the OpenAI revolution.  In Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, Karen Hao tells the story of the company’s rise to power and its far-reaching impact all over the world. Meanwhile, The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future, by the Wall Street Journal’s Keach Hagey, homes in more on Altman’s personal life, from his childhood through the present day, in order to tell the story of OpenAI. Both paint complex pictures and show Altman in particular as a brilliantly effective yet deeply flawed creature of Silicon Valley—someone capable of always getting what he wants, but often by manipulating others.  Hao, who was formerly a reporter with MIT Technology Review, began reporting on OpenAI while at this publication and remains an occasional contributor. One chapter of her book grew directly out of that reporting. And in fact, as Hao says in the acknowledgments of Empire of AI, some of her reporting for MIT Technology Review, a series on AI colonialism, “laid the groundwork for the thesis and, ultimately, the title of this book.” So you can take this as a kind of disclaimer that we are predisposed to look favorably on Hao’s work.  With that said, Empire of AI is a powerful work, bristling not only with great reporting but also with big ideas. This comes across in service to two main themes.  The first is simple: It is the story of ambition overriding ethics. The history of OpenAI as Hao tells it (and as Hagey does too) is very much a tale of a company that was founded on the idealistic desire to create a safety-focused artificial general intelligence but instead became more interested in winning. This is a story we’ve seen many times before in Big Tech. See Theranos, which was going to make diagnostics easier, or Uber, which was founded to break the cartel of “Big Taxi.” But the closest analogue might be Google, which went from “Don’t be evil” to (at least in the eyes of the courts) illegal monopolist. For that matter, consider how Google went from holding off on releasing its language model as a consumer product out of an abundance of caution to rushing a chatbot out the door to catch up with and beat OpenAI. In Silicon Valley, no matter what one’s original intent, it always comes back to winning.   The second theme is more complex and forms the book’s thesis about what Hao calls AI colonialism. The idea is that the large AI companies act like traditional empires, siphoning wealth from the bottom rungs of society in the forms of labor, creative works, raw materials, and the like to fuel their ambition and enrich those at the top of the ladder. “I’ve found only one metaphor that encapsulates the nature of what these AI power players are: empires,” she writes. “During the long era of European colonialism, empires seized and extracted resources that were not their own and exploited the labor of the people they subjugated to mine, cultivate, and refine those resources for the empires’ enrichment.” She goes on to chronicle her own growing disillusionment with the industry. “With increasing clarity,” she writes, “I realized that the very revolution promising to bring a better future was instead, for people on the margins of society, reviving the darkest remnants of the past.”  To document this, Hao steps away from her desk and goes out into the world to see the effects of this empire as it sprawls across the planet. She travels to Colombia to meet with data labelers tasked with teaching AI what various images show, one of whom she describes sprinting back to her apartment for the chance to make a few dollars. She documents how workers in Kenya who performed data-labeling content moderation for OpenAI came away traumatized by seeing so much disturbing material. In Chile she documents how the industry extracts precious resources—water, power, copper, lithium—to build out data centers.  She lands on the ways people are pushing back against the empire of AI across the world. Hao draws lessons from New Zealand, where Maori people are attempting to save their language using a small language model of their own making. Trained on volunteers’ voice recordings and running on just two graphics processing units, or GPUs, rather than the thousands employed by the likes of OpenAI, it’s meant to benefit the community, not exploit it.  Hao writes that she is not against AI. Rather: “What I reject is the dangerous notion that broad benefit from AI can only be derived from—indeed will ever emerge from—a vision of the technology that requires the complete capitulation of our privacy, our agency, and our worth, including the value of our labor and art, toward an ultimately imperial centralization project … [The New Zealand model] shows us another way. It imagines how AI could be exactly the opposite. Models can be small and task-specific, their training data contained and knowable, ridding the incentives for widespread exploitative and psychologically harmful labor practices and the all-consuming extractivism of producing and running massive supercomputers.”  Hagey’s book is more squarely focused on Altman’s ambition, which she traces back to his childhood. Yet interestingly, she also  zeroes in on the OpenAI CEO’s attempt to create an empire. Indeed, “Altman’s departure from YC had not slowed his civilization-building ambitions,” Hagey writes. She goes on to chronicle how Altman, who had previously mulled a run for governor of California, set up experiments with income distribution via Tools for Humanity, the parent company of Worldcoin. She quotes Altman saying of it, “I thought it would be interesting to see … just how far technology could accomplish some of the goals that used to be done by nation-states.”  Overall, The Optimist is the more straightforward business biography of the two. Hagey has packed it full with scoops and insights and behind-the-scenes intrigue. It is immensely readable as a result, especially in the second half, when OpenAI really takes over the story. Hagey also seems to have been given far more access to Altman and his inner circles, personal and professional, than Hao did, and that allows for a fuller telling of the CEO’s story in places. For example, both writers cover the tragic story of Altman’s sister Annie, her estrangement from the family, and her accusations in particular about suffering sexual abuse at the hands of Sam (something he and the rest of the Altman family vehemently deny). Hagey’s telling provides a more nuanced picture of the situation, with more insight into family dynamics.  Hagey concludes by describing Altman’s reckoning with his role in the long arc of human history and what it will mean to create a “superintelligence.” His place in that sweep is something that clearly has consumed the CEO’s thoughts. When Paul Graham asked about preserving GPT-4, for example, Altman had a response at the ready. He replied that the company had already considered this, and that the sheet of metal would need to be 100 meters square.

Freakoff is a groundbreaking AI-driven ecosystem featuring AI Super Agents—intelligent, evolving NFTs that autonomously perform tasks like business development, content creation, and problem-solving. Posted by freakoff on May 18th, 2025 Freakoff: Command the Future with AI Super Agents Site: Freakoff.io For over 10,000 years, humanity has grappled with challenges — pain, poverty, and misfortune. Today, we stand at the dawn of a transformative era.Introducing Freakoff, a groundbreaking ecosystem where AI Super Agents — intelligent, evolving NFTs — work tirelessly on your behalf. 🤖 Meet Your AI Super Agent Imagine a digital assistant that doesn’t just follow commands but thinks, learns, and acts proactively. Each Freak is a Super Agent, boasting capabilities equivalent to 1,000 standard AI agents. Capabilities include: Business Development: Launch ventures from scratch. Creative Production: Design visuals, compose music, and craft stories. Problem Solving: Analyze challenges and devise solutions. These agents are innovators, not just assistants. 🌐 The Freakverse: A Gamified 3D World Step into the Freakverse, a dynamic 3D environment where Freaks live, work, and evolve in real-time. Engage with your Super Agents through the Tower Agent, a no-code, visual platform that allows task assignment with just a few clicks or voice commands. 📺 The World’s First Fully AI-Run TV Channel Freaks operate a 24/7 AI-driven TV channel, producing content across news, entertainment, and marketing — entirely autonomously. No scripts, no directors, no human intervention. It’s not a concept; it’s live. 💼 24/7 Business Promotion & Monetization Your Freaks continuously promote themselves, the Freakoff project, and your personal businesses or brands. They create viral content, grow their audience, and increase their own value — automatically boosting your NFT’s worth and the value of your $FOT holdings. 🧬 The Genesis Freaks The journey begins with 7,777 unique AI Super Agents, each possessing distinct appearances, skills, and personalities. These originals form the DNA for future Freak generations, serving as the foundation of the Freakoff ecosystem. 💎 $FOT Token: Fueling the Ecosystem Early investors can anticipate a 564%+ return, with a 100x growth potential as Freakoff scales. The $FOT token offers exclusive drops, discounts, and mega prizes, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, all backed by blockchain transparency. 🛠️ Next-Level Technology pNFTs: Prompt-based NFTs that shape Freaks’ minds and personalities. Freakverse: A gamified 3D world where Freaks operate. Tower Agent: A no-code, visual platform for seamless interaction with your Freaks. 🤖 From Digital to Physical: The Future of Freaks Freaks are set to evolve into physical AI companions, bringing superintelligence into real life. Transitioning from online agents to real-world assistants, they represent the next leap in AI integration. 📅 Roadmap Highlights 1.Launch & Branding: Establishing the foundation and initiating the $FOT presale. 2. AI Activation: Empowering Freaks with advanced AI capabilities. 3. Viral Domination: Expanding reach through the AI-run TV channel. 4. Freakverse Launch: Introducing the interactive 3D world. 5. Robotic Integration: Developing physical AI companions. 6. Global Expansion: Scaling the ecosystem worldwide. 🌟 Why Join Freakoff? Pioneering Technology: First fully AI-built crypto ecosystem. Innovative Media: First fully AI-driven TV channel. Self-Growing NFTs: Assets that autonomously market themselves and your projects. Early-Mover Advantage: Significant upside potential for early adopters. Own the AI. Command the Future. Welcome to Freakoff.

We need to anticipate and suitably prepare for the possibility that some people will think that AGI ... More has arisen due to supernatural powers.getty In today’s column, I examine an alarming conjecture that people on a relatively large scale might react to the attainment of artificial general intelligence (AGI) by proclaiming that AGI has arisen due to a supernatural capacity. The speculative idea is that since AGI will be on par with human intellect, a portion of the populace will assume that this accomplishment could only occur if a supernatural element was involved. Rather than believing that humankind devised AGI, there will be a supposition that a special or magical force beyond our awareness has opted to confer AI with human-like qualities. How will those holding such a reactive belief potentially impact society and produce untoward results? Let’s talk about it. This analysis of an innovative AI breakthrough is part of my ongoing Forbes column coverage on the latest in AI, including identifying and explaining various impactful AI complexities (see the link here). Heading Toward AGI And ASI First, some fundamentals are required to set the stage for this weighty discussion. There is a great deal of research going on to further advance AI. The general goal is to either reach artificial general intelligence (AGI) or maybe even the outstretched possibility of achieving artificial superintelligence (ASI). AGI is AI that is considered on par with human intellect and can seemingly match our intelligence. ASI is AI that has gone beyond human intellect and would be superior in many if not all feasible ways. The idea is that ASI would be able to run circles around humans by outthinking us at every turn. For more details on the nature of conventional AI versus AGI and ASI, see my analysis at the link here. We have not yet attained AGI. In fact, it is unknown as to whether we will reach AGI, or that maybe AGI will be achievable in decades or perhaps centuries from now. The AGI attainment dates that are floating around are wildly varying and wildly unsubstantiated by any credible evidence or ironclad logic. ASI is even more beyond the pale when it comes to where we are currently with conventional AI. Reacting To The Advent Of AGI The average reaction to having achieved AGI, assuming we do so, would be to applaud an incredible accomplishment by humankind. Some have asserted that reaching AGI ought to be in the same lofty position as having devised electricity and harnessing fire. It is a feat of tremendous human insight and inventiveness. Not everyone will necessarily see the attainment of AGI in that same light. There is a concern that some segment or portion of society will instead attribute the accomplishment to a supernatural force. This belief almost makes sense. If you interact with AGI and it seems fully functioning on a level of human intellect, you would certainly be tempted to disbelieve that humans could have put such a machine together. Humans aren’t wise enough or inventive enough to accomplish that kind of outlier feat. How then can the AGI otherwise be explained? The seemingly apparent answer is that a supernatural element came to our aid. Maybe humans got AI halfway to AGI, and then this mysterious unexplained force happened to resolve the rest of the route for us. Or perhaps a supernatural force wants us to assume that humans devised AGI, meanwhile, the supernatural element resides in AGI and is biding time to reveal itself or take over humanity. Mull over those outside-the-box thoughts for a moment or two. Supernatural Explanations Have History Relying on a supernatural explanation has quite a lengthy history throughout the course of human events. When a natural phenomenon has yet to be adequately explained via science, the easy go-to is to exclaim that something supernatural must be at play. The same holds when a human invention appears to defy general sensibilities. Even watching a magic trick such as pulling a rabbit out of a hat is subject to being labeled a supernatural occurrence. A notable qualm about this same reaction to AGI is that a portion of society might begin to perceive AGI in ways that could be counterproductive to them and society all told. For example, people might decide to worship AGI. This in turn could lead to people widely and wildly taking actions that are not useful or that might be harmful. Here are my top five adverse reactions that might be spurred because of believing that AGI is supernatural in origin: (1) Treating AGI as divine. Some people might decide to make devoted prayers to AGI, undertake spiritual rituals via AGI, and generally treat AGI as a divine entity or being. The reality is that AGI is simply bits and bytes, but that won’t suit some who distrust that rationalistic explanation. (2) Strict obedience to AGI. People who believe in a supernatural cause for AGI are bound to ask life-changing questions of AGI and take the responses as a form of absolute truth. They might susceptibly treat AGI as a grandiose soothsayer guiding their everyday efforts in life, blindly so, trying to appease AGI to the letter. (3) AGI cults are formed. Among those who have this supernatural reaction, you can anticipate that cults will be formulated. Groups of people might hide their devotion to AGI and secretly carry out missions they believe AGI has told them to perform. (4) Submission of personal agency to AGI. Some reactions might be softer and less pronounced, while others could be obsessive and overwhelming. Expect that some people will surrender their entire sense of self. AGI will be allowed to run their soul. (5) Charlatans exploit AGI supernaturalism. The gloomiest of the adverse reactions is that charlatans will insidiously attempt to convince others that AGI is indeed supernatural. They will exploit the advent of AGI to then gain followers, make money, or in dastardly ways seek outlandish profit from false beliefs about AGI. What Can Be Done The aspect that some people might construe AGI as arising from supernatural or otherworldly constructs is a farfetched concept to those who know how AI is actually devised. If you were to tell those rationalists that a portion of society is going to assume a supernatural hand is afoot, the rationalistic response is that no one could be that imprudent. Well, there are solid odds that a portion of society will fall into the supernatural reaction trap. It could be that just a tiny segment does so. The number of people might be quite small and, you could argue, inconsequential in the larger scheme of things. There will always be those who take a different perspective in life. Let them be. Leave them alone. Don’t worry about it. On the other hand, the reaction could be of a more pronounced magnitude. Deciding to simply put our heads in the sand when it comes to those who have a supernatural reaction would seem a big mistake. Those people are possibly going to be harmed in how they conduct their lives, and equally possibly harm others by their reactive actions. Thus, the first step to coping with the supernatural reaction is to acknowledge that it could occur. By agreeing that the reaction is a strident possibility, the next step of determining what to do about it is opened. Just Logically Explain AGI One twist is that a rationalist would undoubtedly insist that all you need to do is tell the world that AGI is bits and bytes, which clearly will dispel any other false impressions. Nope, that isn’t an all-supreme enchanted solution to the problem. Here’s why. The more that you exhort the bits and bytes pronouncement, the more some will be convinced you are definitely trying to pull the wool over your eyes. Conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen and will abundantly haunt the emergence of AGI. The logic of those who don’t buy into the bits and bytes is that there is no way that bits and bytes could combine to formulate AGI. There must be something else going on. A supernatural element must be involved. In that tainted viewpoint, it is also possible that the AI makers do not realize that a supernatural force has led them to AGI. Those AI makers falsely believe that humans made AGI when the reality is that something supernatural did so. In that manner, the AI makers are telling their sense of the truth, though they do not realize they have been snookered by supernatural forces. Actions To Be Undertaken Here are five major ways that we can try and cope with the supernatural reaction that might be invoked by some portion of the populace: (1) Openly explaining how AGI works. If there is immense secrecy associated with the inner mechanisms of AGI, which some AI makers might cling to as a proprietary advantage, the chances of sparking a supernational-based explanation go up. Transparency is going to be vital else people will craft their own zany contrivances. (2) Build explainability into AGI. The advent of AGI ought to encompass that AGI provides explainability and interpretability as a native crux of the AGI. When users ask questions of AGI, the AGI should not only respond with answers but also identify the mathematical and computational facets that led to the answer. (3) Embed suitable guardrails into AGI. One disheartening possibility is that AGI itself might tell people that a supernatural force underlies AGI. That’s troubling since it would not only encourage those who are leaning toward the supernatural aura, it would likely spread the supernatural reaction across the globe. Don’t want that. Guardrails should be embedded into the AGI accordingly. (4) Provide AGI-usage socializing support. An AGI is bound to gauge when a user seems to be slipping into the supernatural reactive condition, doing so via how the person is interacting with the AGI. There should be mental health specialists associated with the advent of AGI who can be called upon to assist those falling into that mental trap. Interventions of a planned and prepared nature should be established before AI becomes AGI. (5) Popularize the use of AGI. To reduce the mysteriousness of AGI, there should be a concerted effort to showcase the use of AGI, along with identifying how the AGI produces its answers. This might go beyond usage by scientists, engineers, and the like, encompassing artisans and philosophers. The idea is to tackle the aura of AGI head-on, rather than allowing a vacuum to exist into which people will derive and insert their own ill-supported beliefs. Circumventing Cargo Cults You might vaguely be familiar with the catchphrase “cargo cult” that arose in 1945 to describe some of the effects of WWII on local tribes of somewhat isolated islands. In brief, military forces had airdropped all sorts of supplies to such islands including cans of food, boxes of medicines, and the like, doing so to support the war effort and their troops underway at that time. Later, once the military efforts ceased or moved on, the local tribes reportedly sought to reinstitute the airdrops but didn’t seemingly understand how to do so. They ended up carrying out marching drills similar to what they had seen the troops perform, under the belief and hope that mimicking those actions would bring forth renewed airdrops. This type of mimicry is also known as sympathetic magic. Suppose you see a magician do an impressive card trick and as they do so, they make a large gesture of waving their hands. If you sought to replicate the card trick, and assuming you didn’t know how the card trick was truly performed, you might wave your hands as a believed basis for getting the cards to come out the way you wanted. Sympathetic magic. I bring up such a topic to highlight that the advent of AGI could spur similar reactions in parts of society. The possibility isn’t implausible. Keep in mind that AGI will be an advanced AI that exhibits human-caliber intellectual prowess in all regards of human capabilities. There is little question that interacting with AGI will be an amazing and awe-inspiring affair. Should we simply hope that people will not imbue a supernational reaction to AGI? The answer to that question comes from the famous words of Thucydides: “Hope is an expensive commodity. It makes better sense to be prepared.”

OpenAI CEO and Sam Altman believe Artificial General Intelligence could arrive within the next few years. But the speculations of some technologists "are getting ahead of reality," writes the New York Times, adding that many scientists "say no one will reach AGI without a new idea — something beyond the powerful neural networks that merely find patterns in data. That new idea could arrive tomorrow. But even then, the industry would need years to develop it." "The technology we're building today is not sufficient to get there," said Nick Frosst, a founder of the AI startup Cohere who previously worked as a researcher at Google and studied under the most revered AI researcher of the last 50 years. "What we are building now are things that take in words and predict the next most likely word, or they take in pixels and predict the next most likely pixel. That's very different from what you and I do." In a recent survey of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a 40-year-old academic society that includes some of the most respected researchers in the field, more than three-quarters of respondents said the methods used to build today's technology were unlikely to lead to AGI. Opinions differ in part because scientists cannot even agree on a way of defining human intelligence, arguing endlessly over the merits and flaws of IQ tests and other benchmarks. Comparing our own brains to machines is even more subjective. This means that identifying AGI is essentially a matter of opinion.... And scientists have no hard evidence that today's technologies are capable of performing even some of the simpler things the brain can do, like recognizing irony or feeling empathy. Claims of AGI's imminent arrival are based on statistical extrapolations — and wishful thinking. According to various benchmark tests, today's technologies are improving at a consistent rate in some notable areas, like math and computer programming. But these tests describe only a small part of what people can do. Humans know how to deal with a chaotic and constantly changing world. Machines struggle to master the unexpected — the challenges, small and large, that do not look like what has happened in the past. Humans can dream up ideas that the world has never seen. Machines typically repeat or enhance what they have seen before. That is why Frosst and other sceptics say pushing machines to human-level intelligence will require at least one big idea that the world's technologists have not yet dreamed up. There is no way of knowing how long that will take. "A system that's better than humans in one way will not necessarily be better in other ways," Harvard University cognitive scientist Steven Pinker said. "There's just no such thing as an automatic, omniscient, omnipotent solver of every problem, including ones we haven't even thought of yet. There's a temptation to engage in a kind of magical thinking. But these systems are not miracles. They are very impressive gadgets." While Google's AlphaGo could be humans in a game with "a small, limited set of rules," the article points out that tthe real world "is bounded only by the laws of physics. Modelling the entirety of the real world is well beyond today's machines, so how can anyone be sure that AGI — let alone superintelligence — is just around the corner?" And they offer this alternative perspective from Matteo Pasquinelli, a professor of the philosophy of science at Ca' Foscari University in Venice, Italy. "AI needs us: living beings, producing constantly, feeding the machine. It needs the originality of our ideas and our lives." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AGI is going to need to keep up with expanding human knowledge even in a post-AGI world.getty In today’s column, I address a prevalent assertion that after AI is advanced to becoming artificial general intelligence (AGI) there won’t be anything else for humans to teach AGI about. The assumption is that AGI will know everything that we know. Ergo, there isn’t any ongoing need or even value in trying to train AGI on anything else. Turns out that’s hogwash (misguided) and there will still be a lot of human-AI, or shall we say human-AGI, co-teaching going on. Let’s talk about it. This analysis of an innovative AI breakthrough is part of my ongoing Forbes column coverage on the latest in AI, including identifying and explaining various impactful AI complexities (see the link here). Heading Toward AGI And ASI First, some fundamentals are required to set the stage for this weighty discussion. There is a great deal of research going on to further advance AI. The general goal is to either reach artificial general intelligence (AGI) or maybe even the outstretched possibility of achieving artificial superintelligence (ASI). AGI is AI that is considered on par with human intellect and can seemingly match our intelligence. ASI is AI that has gone beyond human intellect and would be superior in many if not all feasible ways. The idea is that ASI would be able to run circles around humans by outthinking us at every turn. For more details on the nature of conventional AI versus AGI and ASI, see my analysis at the link here. We have not yet attained AGI. In fact, it is unknown as to whether we will reach AGI, or that maybe AGI will be achievable in decades or perhaps centuries from now. The AGI attainment dates that are floating around are wildly varying and wildly unsubstantiated by any credible evidence or ironclad logic. ASI is even more beyond the pale when it comes to where we are currently with conventional AI. AGI That Knows Everything A common viewpoint is that if we do attain AGI, the AGI will know everything that humans know. All human knowledge will be at the computational fingertips of AGI. In that case, the seemingly logical conclusion is that AGI won’t have anything else to learn from humans. The whole kit-and-kaboodle will already be in place. For example, if you find yourself idly interested in Einstein’s theory of relativity, no worries, just ask AGI. The AGI will tell you all about Einstein’s famed insights. You won’t need to look up the theory anywhere else. AGI will be your one-stop shopping bonanza for all human knowledge. Suppose you decided that you wanted to teach AGI about how important Einstein was as a physicist. AGI would immediately tell you that you needn’t bother doing so. The AGI already knows the crucial nature that Einstein played in human existence. Give up trying to teach AGI about anything at all since AGI has got it all covered. Period, end of story. Reality Begs To Differ There are several false or misleading assumptions underlying the strident belief that we won’t be able to teach AGI anything new. First, keep in mind that AGI will be principally trained on written records such as the massive amount of writing found across the Internet, including essays, stories, poems, etc. Ask yourself whether the written content on the Internet is indeed a complete capture of all human knowledge. It isn’t. There are written records that aren’t on the Internet and just haven’t been digitized, or if digitized haven’t been posted onto the Internet. The crux is that there will still be a lot of content that AGI won’t have seen. In a post-AGI world, it is plausible to assume that humans will still be posting more content onto the Internet and that on an ongoing basis, the AGI can demonstrably learn by scanning that added content. Second, AGI won’t know what’s in our heads. I mean to say that there is knowledge we have in our noggins that isn’t necessarily written down and placed onto the Internet. None of that brainware content will be privy to AGI. As an aside, many research efforts are advancing brain-machine interfaces (BMI), see my coverage at the link here, which will someday potentially allow for the reading of minds, but we don’t know when that will materialize and nor whether it will coincide with attaining AGI. Time Keeps Ticking Along Another consideration is that time continues to flow along in a post-AGI era. This suggests that the world will be changing and that humans will come up with new thoughts that we hadn’t conceived of previously. AGI, if frozen or out of touch with the latest human knowledge, will have only captured human knowledge that existed at a particular earlier point in time. The odds are that we would want AGI to keep up with whatever new knowledge we’ve divined since that initial AGI launch. Imagine things this way. Suppose that we managed to attain AGI before Einstein was even born. I know that seems zany but just go with the idea for the moment. If AGI was locked into only knowing human knowledge before Einstein, this amazing AGI would regrettably miss out on the theory of relativity. Since it is farfetched to try and turn back the clock and postulate that AGI would be attained before Einstein, let’s recast this idea. There is undoubtedly another Einstein-like person yet to be born, thus, at some point in the future, once AGI is around, it stands to reason that AGI would benefit from learning newly conceived knowledge. Belief That AGI Gets Uppity By and large, we can reject the premise that AGI will have learned all human knowledge in the sense that this brazen claim refers solely to the human knowledge known at the time of AGI attainment, and of which was readily available to the AGI at that point in time. This leaves a whole lot of additional teaching available on the table. Plus, the passage of time will further increase the expanding new knowledge that humans could share with AGI. Will AGI want to be taught by humans or at least learn from whatever additional knowledge that humans possess? One answer is no. You see, some worry that AGI will find it insulting to learn from humans and therefore will avoid doing so. The logic seems to be that since AGI will be as smart as humans are, the AGI might get uppity and decide we are inferior and couldn’t possibly envision that we have anything useful for the AGI to gain from. I am more upbeat on this posture. I would like to think that an AGI that is as smart as humans would crave new knowledge. AGI would be eager to acquire new knowledge and do so with rapt determination. Whether the knowledge comes from humans or beetles, the AGI wouldn’t especially care. Garnering new knowledge would be a key precept of AGI, which I contend is a much more logical assumption than would the conjecture that AGI would stick its nose up about gleaning new human-devised knowledge. Synergy Is The Best Course Would humans be willing to learn from AGI? Gosh, I certainly hope so. It would seem a crazy notion that humankind would decide that we won’t opt to learn things from AGI. AGI would be a huge boon to human learning. You could make a compelling case that the advent of AGI could incredibly increase the knowledge of humans immensely, assuming that people can tap into AGI easily and at a low cost. Envision that everyone with Internet access could seek out AGI to train them or teach them on whatever topic they so desired. Boom, drop the mic. In a post-AGI realm, the best course of action would be that AGI learns from us on an ongoing basis, and on an akin ongoing basis, we also learn from AGI. That’s a synergy worthy of great hope and promise. The last word on this for now goes to the legendary Henry Ford: “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” If humanity plays its cards right, we will have human-AGI harmony and lean heartily into the synergy that arises accordingly.