Technologists: Smarter-Than-Humans A.I. Will Likely Be Here by 2030
I’m going to go on record and say “I don’t think so. In fact, I’m pretty sure of it.”
Of course it matters what you mean by “smart.” If it’s to do one narrow task over and over and do it well, then yeah. Look at x-rays and find cancer or something, OK, sure. Play mix and match with proteins and see which ones sequence more rapidly in a test tube, OK, I’ll buy that too.
But “smarter than humans” is a phrase thrown around carelessly, and it matters. Let’s start off with the brain - your brain, anybody’s brain. It’s estimated that it has the capacity to store 2.5 million gigabytes, or 2.5 Terabytes, and I don’t doubt it. I can see a move from 1967, or a Three Stooges reel I saw when I was 8 and say “Oh, I’ve seen this.” Now I might not remember every jot and tittle of the action or dialog but somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain is the ghost of that video, enough for me to recall it 60, 70 years later. That’s a crap-ton of data being carried around in my head.
Can a computer do that? Sure, but as we speak it takes AI a warehouse full of chips and racks and cooling equipment and real estate and power, lots and lots of power to do so. And I am mindful of the early Univac machines and how they have shrunk to the size of a desktop and now to a phone slab, so I don’t discount that the AI data centers might do that someday. But not 6 years from now.
And for the record, most of the amazing AI stunts or tasks are being defined narrowly: AI that does medicine, AI that will tutor, AI that will answer phone calls, that sort of thing. The human brain, by contrast, is a general purpose instrument (excluding those savant or autistic people who can count toothpicks in a box at a glance or do similar feats like hyperthymesia) and there are billions of us walking around the planet compared with what, a few dozen or hundred data centers? (That 99% of all those human brains are underutilitzed is a different issue.)
And while I could write a magazine length piece about this, I’ll give just one more example: dreaming. Computers, even the best AI ones don’t do that yet. They may hallucinate, but that is a different thing. They can synthesize prior data, they can turn yesterday’s jazz into a different piece, but can they enjoy it as well? Can they do anything but regurgitate, except in different order? More to the point, could they ever invent jazz, as humans have done? Or country music? Or brutalist architecture, pointillist painting, or dream of turning horse&buggy’s into self-driving automobiles?
I don’t think so. Certainly not in 6 years. Maybe not ever, although that’s an absolute I wouldn’t stake my reputation on. By 2030? Don’t make me laugh.
