{"id":330702,"date":"2025-08-09T14:00:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T14:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/330702\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T14:00:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T14:00:11","slug":"its-missing-something-agi-superintelligence-and-a-race-for-the-future-artificial-intelligence-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/330702\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s missing something\u2019: AGI, superintelligence and a race for the future | Artificial intelligence (AI)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A significant step forward but not a leap over the finish line<\/a>. That was how Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, described the latest upgrade to ChatGPT this week.<\/p>\n

The race Altman was referring to was artificial general intelligence (AGI), a theoretical state of AI where, by OpenAI\u2019s definition, a highly autonomous system is able to do a human\u2019s job.<\/p>\n

Describing the new GPT-5 model, which will power ChatGPT<\/a>, as a \u201csignificant step on the path to AGI\u201d, he nonetheless added a hefty caveat.<\/p>\n

\u201c[It is] missing something quite important, many things quite important,\u201d said Altman, such as the model\u2019s inability to \u201ccontinuously learn\u201d even after its launch. In other words, these systems are impressive but they have yet to crack the autonomy that would allow them to do a full-time job.<\/p>\n

OpenAI\u2019s competitors, also flush with billions of dollars to lavish on the same goal, are straining for the tape too. Last month, Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook parent Meta<\/a>, said development of superintelligence \u2013 another theoretical state of AI where a system far exceeds human cognitive abilities \u2013 is \u201cnow in sight\u201d.<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s AI unit on Tuesday outlined its next step to AGI by announcing an unreleased model<\/a> that trains AIs to interact with a convincing simulation of the real world, while Anthropic, another company making significant advances, announced an upgrade to its Claude Opus 4 model.<\/p>\n

So where does this leave the race to AGI and superintelligence?<\/p>\n

Benedict Evans, a tech analyst, says the race towards a theoretical state of AI is taking place against a backdrop of scientific uncertainty \u2013 despite the intellectual and financial investment in the quest.<\/p>\n

Describing AGI as a \u201cthought experiment as much as it is a technology\u201d, he says: \u201cWe don\u2019t really have a theoretical model of why generative AI models work so well and what would have to happen for them to get to this state of AGI.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds: \u201cIt\u2019s like saying \u2018we\u2019re building the Apollo programme but we don\u2019t actually know how gravity works or how far away the moon is, or how a rocket works, but if we keep on making the rocket bigger maybe we\u2019ll get there\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo use the term of the moment, it\u2019s very vibes-based. All of these AI scientists are really just telling us what their personal vibes are on whether we\u2019ll reach this theoretical state \u2013 but they don\u2019t know. And that\u2019s what sensible experts say too.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Aaron Rosenberg, a partner at venture capital firm Radical Ventures \u2013 whose investments include leading AI firm Cohere \u2013 and former head of strategy and operations at Google\u2019s AI unit DeepMind, says a more limited definition of AGI could be achieved around the end of the decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you define AGI more narrowly as at least 80th percentile human-level performance in 80% of economically relevant digital tasks, then I think that\u2019s within reach in the next five years,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Matt Murphy, a partner at VC firm Menlo Ventures, says the definition of AGI is a \u201cmoving target\u201d.<\/p>\n

He adds: \u201cI\u2019d say the race will continue to play out for years to come and that definition will keep evolving and the bar being raised.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even without AGI, the generative AI systems in circulation are making money. The New York Times reported this month<\/a> that OpenAI\u2019s annual recurring revenue has reached $13bn (\u00a310bn), up from $10bn earlier in the summer, and could pass $20bn by the year end. Meanwhile, OpenAI is reportedly in talks about a sale of shares held by current and former employees that would value it at about $500bn, exceeding the price tag for Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some experts view statements about superintelligent systems as creating unrealistic expectations, while distracting from more immediate concerns such as making sure that systems being deployed now are reliable, transparent and free of bias.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rush to claim \u2018superintelligence\u2019 among the major tech companies reflects more about competitive positioning than actual technical breakthroughs,\u201d says David Bader, director of the institute for data science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe need to distinguish between genuine advances and marketing narratives designed to attract talent and investment. From a technical standpoint, we\u2019re seeing impressive improvements in specific capabilities \u2013 better reasoning, more sophisticated planning, enhanced multimodal understanding.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut superintelligence, properly defined, would represent systems that exceed human performance across virtually all cognitive domains. We\u2019re nowhere near that threshold.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the major US tech firms will keep trying to build systems that match or exceed human intelligence at most tasks. Google\u2019s parent Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon alone will spend nearly $400bn this year on AI, according to the Wall Street Journal<\/a>, comfortably more than EU members\u2019 defence spend<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rosenberg acknowledges he is a former Google DeepMind employee but says the company has big advantages in data, hardware, infrastructure and an array of products to hone the technology, from search to maps and YouTube. But advantages can be slim.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the frontier, as soon as an innovation emerges, everyone else is quick to adopt it. It\u2019s hard to gain a huge gap right now,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

It is also a global race, or rather a contest, that includes China. DeepSeek<\/a> came from nowhere this year to announce the DeepSeek R1 model, boasting of \u201cpowerful and intriguing reasoning behaviours\u201d comparable with OpenAI\u2019s best work.<\/p>\n

Major companies looking to integrate AI into their operations have taken note. Saudi Aramco, the world\u2019s largest oil company, uses DeepSeek\u2019s AI technology in its main datacentre and said it was \u201creally making a big difference\u201d to its IT systems and was making the company more efficient.<\/p>\n

According to Artificial Analysis, a company that ranks AI models, six of the top 20 on its leaderboard \u2013 which ranks models according to a range of metrics including intelligence, price and speed \u2013 are Chinese. The six models are developed by DeepSeek, Zhipu AI, Alibaba and MiniMax. On the leaderboard for video generation models, six of the top 10 \u2013 including the current leader, ByteDance\u2019s Seedance \u2013 are also Chinese.<\/p>\n

Microsoft\u2019s president, Brad Smith, whose company has barred use of DeepSeek, told a US senate hearing in May that getting your AI model adopted globally was a key factor in determining which country wins the AI race.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe number one factor that will define whether the US or China wins this race is whose technology is most broadly adopted in the rest of the world,\u201d he said, adding that the lesson from Huawei and 5G was that whoever establishes leadership in a market is \u201cdifficult to supplant\u201d.<\/p>\n

It means that, arguments over the feasibility of superintelligent systems aside, vast amounts of money and talent are being poured into this race in the world\u2019s two largest economies \u2013 and tech firms will keep running.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look back five years ago to 2020 it was almost blasphemous to say AGI was on the horizon. It was crazy to say that. Now it seems increasingly consensus to say we are on that path,\u201d says Rosenberg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A significant step forward but not a leap over the finish line. That was how Sam Altman, chief…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-330702","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-technology","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114999172982127369","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}