From ChatGPT to Singularity: The Search for a Truly Intelligent Machine

Singularity Unleashed — Will AI lead to Utopia or Dystopia?

Will humans and machines become one? Will one enslave the other? Source: Battlestar Galactica (Fair Use)

In the world of AI, the ideas of technological singularity and General Artificial Intelligence (AGI) loom large.

These two related concepts are oftentimes conflated, but they aren’t exactly the same. The former refers to a historic technological milestone for human advancement, while the latter reflects just one of several ways to get there.

With ChatGPT gaining extremely rapid worldwide adoption, many are excited or concerned that we’re not too far off from witnessing these threshold events.

First up, let’s clarify some basic ideas.

Artificial General Intelligence refers to an AI system capable of performing any intellectual task a human can. Unlike narrow AI that’s designed to perform specific tasks like image recognition or natural language processing — and this includes the current state-of-the-art GPT-4 — AGI is designed to be an adaptable all-encompassing system that learn and reason the same way humans do.

Utopia or dystopia? No one knows what lies beyond the technological event horizon. Credit: Annibale Siconolfi (Fair Use)