Google DeepMind CEO says some form of AGI possible in a few years
I&#x27;m confused about what the goal of &quot;AI&quot; is anymore. Does anyone else feel similar?<p>Researches seem fixated to create something like &quot;a really smart person or intellectual slave&quot;, LLMs make it seem like we&#x27;re close to that I guess?<p>Is there not a whole lot more usefulness in solving actual problems with &quot;AI&quot; without the potential risks and baggage of creating, I don&#x27;t know, is it super capable  idiot savant?<p>The approach deep mind was taking before entering this sort of &quot;talking computer&quot; arms race seemed actually quite useful and less &quot;disruptive&quot;. Things like AlphaFold are more inline with what I was hoping to see going forwards. Now I just don&#x27;t really know what the the plan is?<p>Is it to one day be able to sit at your computer and say things like: &quot;I want you to solve cancer&quot; and &quot;replace my secretary, she&#x27;s too expensive&quot;, &quot;build as many paper clips as possible but don&#x27;t hurt anyone?&quot;, and expect that it will kind of do it? Do we expect that everyone will freely have access to these systems or just a few people? Is this sustainable and practical long term?<p>In one interview I saw, Ilya Sutskever has claimed every town, state and country will have sort of AI representative, and in another basically stating we might not have to work and become &quot;enlightened beings&quot;. Why on earth do we need an AGI to become &quot;enlightened beings&quot;, has this gentlemen never read any literature on &quot;enlightenment&quot;?<p>I&#x27;m really struggling to see how the type of world some of these researchers seem to be gunning for is actually ideal or even wise even if achievable, especially given the mounting levels of anxiety around LLMs and their implications. Are the ethics ever actually considered?<p>It seems like &quot;building AGI&quot; is kind of like, building a <i>something (loosely defined)</i> which could have a lot of negative unintended side effects, but for what now? Just intellectual curiosity ? Fulfilling a Sci-Fi fetish?<p>Personally, I think this is what has spooked Geoff Hinton, he has seen an acceleration toward <i>something</i>, but he realizes we have zero idea what to do when or if when we build the &quot;something&quot;. He now realizes the military or bad actors will take advantage of these AGI(?) and he might be alive to have to see the consequences of that.