On Artificial General Intelligence, AI Sentience, And Large Language Models

OpenAI’s new model DALL-E 2, for instance, can produce captivating original images based on simple text prompts. DeepMind recently announced a new model called Gato that can single-handedly perform hundreds of different tasks, from playing video games to engaging in conversation to stacking real-world blocks with a robot arm. Some credible AI researchers believe that we are now within striking distance of “artificial general intelligence” (AGI), an often-discussed benchmark that refers to powerful, flexible AI that can outperform humans at any cognitive task. A basic principle about AI that people too often miss is that artificial intelligence is and will be fundamentally unlike human intelligence. It is a mistake to analogize artificial intelligence too directly to human intelligence . . .