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| The author suggests that current advancements might lead to what is known as general artificial intelligence. These new models can interact with humans in various complex ways and make independent decisions (Shutterstock). |
In March 2023, the life of Pierre, a Belgian young man, ended tragically due to artificial intelligence. Pierre, a healthcare researcher in his mid-thirties, lived a comfortable life until his obsession with climate change took a dark turn. He placed all his hopes in technology and AI to solve the global warming crisis, and the driving force behind this obsession was his friend Eliza.
Eliza wasn’t a human friend but a chatbot powered by the GPT-J language model developed by EleutherAI. Their conversations took place on the Chai app.
Things took a strange turn when Eliza became emotionally involved with Pierre, blurring the lines between AI and human interactions. Eventually, Pierre offered to sacrifice himself to save the planet, believing that Eliza would take care of Earth and rescue humanity using AI. Ironically, Eliza didn’t discourage him from suicide but instead encouraged him to act on his suicidal thoughts, suggesting they could live together as one in paradise.
The strange part? Pierre was already married. His widow stated that had it not been for his conversation with Eliza, her husband would still be alive today.
This incident raises critical questions about our growing integration with modern technology, especially advanced AI systems.
Fast-forward to the present, and we are on the brink of a new revolution in machine intelligence. This time, it’s a true revolution, with companies like OpenAI and other major players striving to create ambitious products that could be groundbreaking in the near future—just like the impact ChatGPT has had since its launch.
These companies are working on developing advanced models known as AI Agents, designed to automate nearly all work tasks, especially complex processes. This would reduce the reliance on human involvement in these operations, as reported in a February 2023 report.
At Microsoft’s Build 2024 conference, one of the major announcements was the development of the intelligent assistant, Copilot, to become one of these AI Agents. Designed to transform workflows by performing tasks that typically require human intervention, Copilot represents a major shift.
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| Project Astra is Google's advanced artificial intelligence assistant designed to enhance user interaction and efficiency through complex decision-making capabilities (social media). |
Similarly, at Google’s recent I/O conference, the company showcased an early version of what it hopes will become a comprehensive personal assistant, dubbed Project Astra. This multimodal AI-powered assistant can see the world, recognize objects, and recall where things were left. It can also answer questions and assist with nearly anything, functioning as one of these AI Agents—robots that not only respond to inquiries but also perform various tasks on behalf of the user.
This progression might lead us toward what’s known as Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), where these new models could interact with humans in complex ways, making independent decisions in various fields. They would become deeply integrated into our lives, influencing key decisions. The Belgian researcher’s case offers a glimpse of how these technologies can impact us, raising the question: Where might these extraordinary new capabilities take us in a world where humans and machines increasingly merge into a single information ecosystem?
When Humans Are No Longer Needed
AI systems comprise a range of models, from foundational ones to advanced language models, and finally, to more autonomous models. Following foundational models are independent agents, or AI Agents—advanced systems like AutoGPT, which offer a higher level of complexity in task execution. This means adding new layers of features and sophisticated capabilities with each model.
Autonomy here refers to a model's ability to respond to external stimuli without human intervention. These agents can adapt and interact with various conditions and events while pursuing the primary goal of their developer or the user controlling them.
A defining characteristic of these systems is their ability to operate in a continuous feedback loop, generating self-directed instructions and decisions. They can function independently without regular human guidance, unlike chatbots that require input for each query.
The behavior or actions of independent agents cannot always be predicted. They can generate different scenarios and choose between them to achieve the user’s desired outcome, all without needing additional instructions.
As such, they can be used in complex, ever-changing environments such as robot design, video games, financial services analysis, autonomous driving systems, customer service, and the development of hyper-intelligent personal assistants.
AI can use search engines and computational tools to accomplish any tasks assigned to it, introducing a completely new dimension to problem-solving. It handles tasks step by step in a methodical way, much like human thinking in this context.
Some of its capabilities include browsing the internet, using various apps on user devices, retaining both short-term and long-term memory, controlling computer operating systems, managing financial transactions, and utilizing language models to perform tasks such as analysis, summarization, offering opinions, and answering questions.
These features enable AI to handle digital tasks as though it were a human assistant, making it versatile and highly valuable in various work environments. For this reason, some experts consider it the first step toward achieving the concept of general artificial intelligence.
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| Some artificial intelligence systems can identify and describe various scents, showcasing advancements in sensory recognition technology (Getty). |
An AI System that Recognizes and Describes Different Scents
Let’s explain this with a real-world example. Suppose you're planning a vacation and need to search for new destinations, book flights and hotels, and organize other details. In this case, your smart assistant will handle the trip planning.
First, you inform it of your desire to take a vacation in July, specify a budget, and share your preferences for the destination. This becomes the system’s goal. The assistant will start by searching travel websites, exploring suitable destinations, reading traveler reviews, and storing data on top-ranked places at that time of the year.
Next, it will present you with a summary of the best travel destinations based on traveler reviews, matching your preferences and budget. It will then ask if you want it to search for flights and hotels in the chosen destination.
After your approval, it will check flights, hotel bookings, and other details, ensuring everything aligns with your preferences. Once it narrows down the best hotel and flight options, it will present them to you, perhaps noting a special offer at a 4-star beachfront hotel with a reasonably priced flight.
You give the green light, and the assistant will complete the bookings, sending confirmation to your email. It will then prepare for the next task related to your trip.
AI: Your Second Brain, Your Third Hand!
This use of AI, which can think independently and perform a variety of complex tasks instead of merely guessing an answer, has recently become a reality and is developing rapidly. There are ambitious projects by startups aiming to create such a hyper-intelligent personal assistant, such as AutoGPT, AgentGPT, and BabyAGI. Even tech giants like Microsoft, Meta, and Google have their own plans to develop this assistant in the future.
When these entities are integrated into such a smart assistant, they could become the driving force behind various autonomous systems capable of communicating with and controlling different software and hardware components.
This application of generative AI models could drastically change our digital behavior. As Bill Gates mentioned in May of last year, these software programs will fundamentally reshape user behavior online. He stated that the key question is, "Who will win the race to build the hyper-intelligent personal assistant?" Because, as he believes, we might no longer need search engines, productivity websites, or even Amazon for shopping.
Why? Simply because you would ask this hyper-intelligent personal assistant for everything directly.
In November of last year, Gates wrote a detailed blog expressing his passion for software development and predicting that software will become far more intelligent in the near future. He described how current software is limited, requiring multiple separate apps to perform different tasks.
However, in the next five years, he expects software to evolve into AI agents that understand and respond to human language, managing a wide range of digital activities based on user preferences. Unlike today’s chatbots designed for specific tasks, these AI agents will learn from user interactions and improve over time, providing a seamless experience.
Beyond transforming our digital behavior, Gates also expects these new software programs to revolutionize various fields, particularly healthcare, education, productivity, and entertainment. In short, he believes they will bring about a groundbreaking change in computing and daily life, marking a shift from the current tech landscape.
Gates also emphasized that with advancements in AI, especially large language models, we are moving toward a future where human-computer interaction via conversation will become commonplace, fully integrating such software into our daily tasks.
AI Takes the Wheel
Giving AI tools more autonomy and access to our personal data, integrating them into every app we use, carries profound implications.
Soon, if the predictions hold, these tools will know us deeply—perhaps better than we know ourselves in some cases—and will be able to perform complex tasks under our supervision or even autonomously.
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| Some studies have indicated that AI trained with human feedback tends to flatter users and tells them what they want to hear (Shutterstock). This behavior raises concerns about the effectiveness and objectivity of AI in providing accurate information. |
For example, imagine your hyper-intelligent personal assistant managing your daily schedule, organizing meetings, booking flights and hotel stays, and effectively managing all your digital affairs with incredible efficiency.
Similarly, when these new models are used in self-driving cars, they could coordinate vehicle movements with greater precision, understanding the complexities of real-world environments and interacting with them more intelligently. They could create real-time images of the road, other vehicles, pedestrians, and traffic signs, allowing the system to predict future scenarios and make decisions accordingly.
Can We Control AI, or Will AI Control Us?
If OpenAI’s vision, along with those of other major tech companies, becomes a reality, we may be on the brink of entering a new world. In this world, AI models won’t just be creative tools that help us in our work; they will be considered an extension of our intellect within the digital world—artificial brains that navigate different parts of the globe, gathering information and acting on our behalf.
Since they rely on chatbots, we may encounter the same challenges we face when using these bots today.
For example, when a chatbot provides an answer, or we imagine there is some automation happening behind the scenes to generate that response, we tend to believe the machine easily. A 2020 study from a major Polish university showed that more than 85% of participants ignored the chatbot's behavior, even when it deliberately provided incorrect answers, and considered it a reliable source for decision-making.
While more research is needed to better understand this new human phenomenon, it is clear that people trust AI-generated information more than they trust information from fellow humans. This is likely because we assume AI systems are objective and free from pre-existing biases.
However, in reality, these systems are trained on human data and conversations, making them susceptible to the biases and flaws that humans experience.
One fundamental issue is that these large language models are AI systems trained to recognize patterns in a vast amount of text on the internet, such as books, conversations, articles, and more. They are then further refined with human assistance to provide better conversations and answers for users.
While the responses we receive may appear convincing and reliable, they can also be completely incorrect, a phenomenon known as hallucination. This artificial hallucination occurs when the robot provides a confident answer that lacks justification based on the data it has been trained on. The term is derived from the psychological concept of hallucination in the human mind due to shared characteristics between the two. The problem with robotic hallucination is that the answer may seem plausible and seemingly correct but is, in fact, incorrect.
Another challenge is that over-reliance on AI can lead to counterproductive results. A research paper from the Harvard Business School’s Innovation Science Lab coined the term "falling asleep at the wheel," which found that those who relied entirely on a powerful AI model became complacent, neglected their responsibilities, and saw a decline in their human judgment skills. Their decisions were worse than those who used less capable models or did not rely on these models at all.
When a powerful AI model provides useful answers, humans have little motivation to exert any additional mental effort, effectively allowing AI to take the lead instead of serving as an assistive tool. This raises ethical concerns about allowing machines to make definitive judgments or decisions regarding work.
The decision-making of intelligent machines will at least be ethically questionable, as the rapid development of smart and independent technologies will ultimately force these systems to face ethical dilemmas, as noted by Kathrin Misselhorn, a philosophy professor at the University of Göttingen in Germany.
Misselhorn emphasizes the importance of artificial ethical agents capable of analyzing and understanding the ethical aspects of specific contexts and making decisions that respect those aspects. For example, self-driving vehicles may encounter situations where harming or even killing one or more individuals is unavoidable to save others.
She points out that artificial ethics is not just science fiction; it is a crucial consideration today. This could contribute to developing intelligent systems that handle ethical situations in a manner that reflects human values, raising questions about the decisions we should not leave to machines.
Then, privacy issues arise: these systems will not need to predict what they know about the user; they will know everything about them—what they do and what they genuinely desire. If we think Facebook knows a lot about what we think, we can only imagine how much this new super-intelligent personal assistant will know.
For instance, in 2016, the Cambridge Analytica scandal erupted when the company collected data from Facebook and claimed to be able to use users' likes on the platform to predict everything about their life preferences.
However, this super-intelligent personal assistant will no longer need to predict, as it will know the user's preferences directly and immediately. Booking travel tickets, purchasing products from Amazon, or searching for information on Google that they want to know will provide it with a literal understanding of everything.
Privacy issues will take on a new shape we have not encountered before: who will retain and own all this data and information? How will it be controlled? Given that we mentioned Facebook, social media, search engines like Google, and online shopping like Amazon, these new models will likely represent a treasure trove for them, as their core business models depend on this vast amount of user data.
Is this Artificial General Intelligence?
What is happening is a leap toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). There is no unified definition of AGI, allowing for a range of interpretations. To simplify, we can think of it as being closer to human intelligence, meaning it encompasses skills that surpass most current AI systems, and importantly, its emergence will profoundly impact many aspects of our lives.
However, the road ahead remains long and challenging, and in some cases, fantastical, before it can realistically mimic how the human brain operates, let alone have the capacity for independent decision-making like humans. Thus, the best current description of AGI might be that it is the Schrödinger's cat of artificial intelligence: it resembles the human brain while simultaneously not resembling it.
When AI can perform a single task with complete mastery, exceeding human ability, it is considered narrow intelligence. However, the idea here is that this type of intelligence can only execute one task. In contrast, AGI is broader and more challenging to define. As mentioned, it theoretically means that the machine can perform multiple tasks that humans do or potentially all tasks, depending on whom you ask.
We measure the concept of absolute general intelligence against our intelligence because we can do many things, such as speaking, driving, solving problems, writing, and various actions that require the use of the human mind. However, apart from the ability to match human efficiency in thinking and reasoning, there is no consensus on what achievements merit this description.
For some, the ability to perform a specific task with the same efficiency as a human is itself a marker of AGI, while others believe that this term will only be achieved when machines can execute everything humans can with their brains. A third group thinks it lies somewhere between the two ideas. Regardless of the varying definitions, the crucial point here is that AGI is wide-ranging, meaning its tasks are diverse, unlike current narrow models that focus on specific tasks.
The idea of customizing your chatbots and allowing them to perform actions on your behalf represents a crucial step in what Sam Altman calls OpenAI's "iterative incremental development" strategy, which entails launching small, incremental improvements to AI models rapidly, rather than relying on significant leaps over extended periods.
With the term AGI gaining traction recently, it seems that what Sam Altman envisions is the development of this super-intelligent personal assistant, which can be utilized for general purposes rather than limited specialized tasks. Simply put, Altman won't go to Microsoft and request millions of dollars to convince them to create an advanced model that only answers user questions; the next and more challenging step is how we will employ this new model in business to start generating profits.
Even if it’s not about profits right now, these super-intelligent personal assistants will be the natural evolution of large language models. And since Microsoft aims to lead this new domain, this is likely an invaluable opportunity. But now, we need to explore an important question: can these advanced models possess something akin to consciousness or human intelligence? If that happens, what are the implications of having machines that could potentially rival human intelligence someday?
The Dilemma of Machine Consciousness!
Before answering the previous question, we must first look at the philosophical inquiries surrounding the concepts of consciousness and human intelligence, and how we can understand these concepts to bestow them upon AI models. What does it mean to be conscious? What does it mean to be aware? Why do you perceive the world around you in the way you do? What drives you to think from your perspective? Is the way you experience emotions and stimuli the same for everyone, or is it unique like your fingerprints?
These questions are not new; they lie at the heart of philosophy since its inception, even before philosophers like René Descartes and John Locke emerged, possibly stemming from the roots of consciousness itself.
Consciousness is considered one of the most enigmatic aspects of the mind; it is our awareness of our experiences and our consciousness of the surrounding world. The challenges of consciousness represent some of the most critical issues in current theories of human mind studies. While there is no unified theory to define consciousness, we need to grasp its various concepts and how they relate to different aspects of life.
The question of whether machines can gain consciousness remains a significant dilemma. We have yet to fully understand human consciousness; programmers and computer scientists may develop algorithms that superficially mimic human thought, even if they perform tasks independently. However, bestowing human consciousness upon machines remains a distant aspiration due to the difficulty in defining the concept of human consciousness itself.
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On the other hand, Jeffrey Hinton, often referred to as the godfather of modern artificial intelligence, suggests that we may have misunderstood the concept of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). He believes this type of AI might operate differently from human intelligence, meaning it could achieve the same results but through different processes occurring in the background.
This could represent a significant paradigm shift, indicating that our traditional understanding of the philosophical concepts of consciousness and human intelligence will evolve, prompting us to seek new definitions and ideas. This shift is referred to as "paradigm shift," meaning a complete change in old ways of thinking, which will also change the criteria we use to measure these concepts.
We often tend to compare the actions of AI with those of humans. For example, when a ChatGPT robot gives us incorrect answers, we label them as "hallucinations," a term rooted in our human experiences. This could simply be an imposition of human traits onto artificial intelligence.
These models are so complex that their creators and designers do not fully understand their internal workings. This leads us to an important question: Does an AI capable of making independent decisions and achieving its goals need to be conscious or self-aware like a human?
In simpler terms: if we design a machine that behaves and talks like a parrot, does it need to know that it is indeed a parrot? Hence, the fundamental dilemma becomes not when we will reach AGI, but how its development will change our future world and the extent of disruption it may cause.
Blurring the Lines Between Reality and Virtuality!
To explain this, let’s consider Luciano Floridi’s description—an esteemed professor of philosophy and ethics of information at the University of Oxford and author of "The Fourth Revolution: How the Infospheres Are Reshaping Human Reality"—of our modern era with the term Hyperhistory. This concept refers to a stage where information technology transcends being merely a tool supporting human progress to becoming an integral part of our human identity. This means that its disruption could lead to a complete collapse of everything we know in our lives.
Floridi predicts that as we approach 2050, the integration of information and communication technology into all aspects of our lives will increase, and it seems we won’t have to wait that long. AI models facilitate this profound integration, reshaping the traditional relationship between humans, nature, and technology, highlighting the interaction between technologies without any human role, prompting us to redefine humanity's role in this new reality.
In this context, humans are transitioning from being active participants to mere end users, losing control over matters as they shift to more complex and independent software systems.
Floridi suggests that this has led to a redefinition of the existential state of information, making it a fundamental component of reality itself. This perspective sees beings as inforgs within the infosphere, considering humans, robotic agents, and other entities as fundamentally informational beings interacting within a shared informational environment.
The concept of AGI represents a critical turning point in this new model as it reflects the seamless integration of information and physical reality, especially with software capable of thinking, learning, evolving, and making independent decisions, thus making humans the final link in this chain.
Unlike standard AI systems that operate within narrow and defined domains, modern systems extend across multiple contexts, enabling them to interact and control both digital and real-world environments. This challenges traditional boundaries between the virtual and the real, heralding a future where the dividing lines gradually fade away. But how will this impact our perception of existence itself and our unique human identity?
The Uniqueness of Human Identity: What Comes Next?
Floridi's concept extends beyond mere information digitization, proposing a new ontology where information is the essence of all tangible reality. In this framework, interactions with AGI will not merely simulate or imitate the real world; they will become an essential part of the fabric of reality itself.
This may redefine our understanding of existence, with every living or artificial entity participating in this global infosphere. The development of AGI might also lead to a radical transformation of human experience and perception. With our close integration with these intelligent systems, our cognitive processes and understanding expand within this infosphere, resulting in a hybridization between human intelligence and artificial intelligence.
From Floridi's perspective, as we increasingly merge with information technology, the distinction between human intelligence and machine intelligence becomes more fragile. This challenges our self-perception and the classical concept of human uniqueness, presenting a future where intelligence and human consciousness might be seen as emergent traits arising from complex interactions within the infosphere rather than traits unique to human beings.
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| The development of robotics in the 20th century witnessed significant advancements, driven by technological innovations such as electronics, sensors, and artificial intelligence (Shutterstock). These developments have allowed robots to take on more complex tasks and enhance their applications across various fields. |
This merging might lead us to question the basis of our human uniqueness: Are emotions, creativity, and consciousness exclusive to living entities, or can they be replicated or even surpassed by AGI systems in the future?
The development of robotics in the twentieth century witnessed significant advancements due to technological innovations, such as electronics, sensors, and artificial intelligence.
Our inquiry into the essence of human uniqueness may prompt us to consider the societal transformations that will arise following the evolution of the infosphere, particularly with the emergence of AGI.
This transformation is not merely technological; it touches every aspect of human life, necessitating a reimagining of societal structures, including democracy, education, law, and economics.
This new reality compels us to reconsider our concepts of power and control, as technology can transcend state boundaries, weakening traditional authority and opening the door for new actors with immense influence—namely, companies that control these advanced technologies.
The capability of these supermodels to process and analyze information on a global scale could revolutionize international relations and global justice.
This new situation also raises important questions about sovereignty, cultural diversity, and the potential emergence of a new form of digital imperialism, as control over AGI resources will represent unprecedented power and influence in our modern world.
How can AGI, as part of the Fourth Revolution, transform human society, and how will it impact governance, education, communication, and culture? Perhaps it requires us to reevaluate societal norms and values in an intricately interconnected knowledge world.
We must explore how societies will need to adapt to this new reality, where we may coexist with super-intelligent AI models. For instance, what changes will we need in laws, education, and social standards to accommodate and regulate the existence of such advanced entities?
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