Technology expert and A&E columnist John Sanei discusses the future of AI
For the last 50 or 60 years, AI has been bubbling under the surface, but it was only around 18 months ago that we all became so enthralled with it when OpenAI launched ChatGPT.
We must remember that Google had all of the technology that ChatGPT had, but it decided to delay the launch of its AI systems because it wanted to keep protecting its search business. Now, they are in big trouble because OpenAI can work as a much better search engine!
What we have experienced so far is “Predictive AI.” This is actually not intelligence; it’s about predicting what’s coming next. Predictive AI analyses, forecasts and optimises. It analyses words or pictures that you put together, and based on that, it forecasts what will come next at an optimal level. It does have its limits, which is why we are seeing many of the same words being used and the same patterns in language because this predictive machine can only predict so much. It has, however, shifted how we make content, write emails, letters, etc.
An interesting thing we’ve seen with predictive AI includes a company called the Earth Species Project. This is predicting how animal language is spoken based on patterns. They have tracked animals and have been about to create and understand their languages. They have even spoken back to whales! Languages are just patterns and sounds, and so if you apply the same technology to animal language it works in the same way.
Looking ahead, we are about to move into the next phase of AI with “Generative AI.” This is one step up from predictive AI, and it’s not predicting anything; rather, it’s creating and reasoning. This means that generative AI is actually replicating the way a human works. The right-hand side of your brain creates, and the left-hand side reasons, and your eyes and ears interact with the world. Generative AI is actually copying the human process from the right brain of creation to the left brain of reasoning. It’s able to do this just like a human does.
In fact, it is smarter than humans. AI currently has an IQ of roughly 155. The average person has an IQ of 90 and 120. Elon Musk has 155 IQ points. Consider what Elon Musk is doing compared to the average person. At just 35 more IQ points than the average, he is revolutionising space, transportation, brain, AI – you name it. Now think about an IQ of 162, which is what Albert Einstein had – he was able to shift our understanding of reality. So, if you think about what people can do with just slightly higher levels of intelligence, then you consider that AI doubles in its intelligence every six months. So if it’s 155 now, it will be 310 by the beginning of next year, and by June, it will be 620 and so on. Now ask yourself how you will compete with Generative AI with IQ points ten times that of the smartest human we have ever had in the world. It’s unfathomable what it will be doing. In the next few years, we will see the real impact of what AI can do. So far, we have only really seen the predictive model, and so the next phase of AI starts to bring in the question of “how do humans add value in the world if we are competing with AI of this level?” It’s impossible. Now, before you panic, remember that humans are not stronger than tractors, and we don’t even try to be. We don’t try to run faster than cars. We don’t try to fly higher than a plane. During the agricultural period, physicality was how we added value, and then we started developing intelligence. Now, we are in a phase where intelligence is being challenged by AI, just like physicality was challenged by intelligence.
Soon enough, we must realise that we can’t compete against AI, so we must start developing new skills. These new skills are unfamiliar, but they will be focused on emotions, which will be the currency of our future. This may seem a bit vague, and it is, because we don’t quite know yet how it will work. But remember, in the agricultural era, we didn’t understand the next phase of the industrial revolution, and then we didn’t understand that analytical processes would take over from that. We have had to develop new skills before, and we will do it again.
And it doesn’t stop there. After Generative AI we will move to regenerative AI, which is already two steps ahead. Regenerative AI is about adapting, evolving and self improvement. Here, AI starts to build on itself. It starts to create itself, educate itself, and understand itself, and this is a much more intelligent way of thinking about AI. As we move into this phase, we realise that human beings are not even needed in many operations or tasks.
This is not to scare anybody. This is to remind us that we, as human beings, have not yet reached our full potential.
To succeed in the world of AI, we need to start exploring adaptability and new ways of engaging with the world so we realise that IQ is not the way we will add value over the next few years; it will come from somewhere else. And the ones that are going to win are the ones that are going to become optimistic about uncertainty and adaptable to learning new things and, most importantly, unlearning old things.
