Ben Goertzel, founder of SingularityNET, discussed the breakthrough in AI technology and its economic and social implications in an interview. He explained how systems like ChatGPT achieve a high level of breadth of intelligence by having a broad training dataset, but will never be able to fundamentally leap beyond its training data. While some in the AI field think that GPT-7 could eventually think like a human, Goertzel disagrees and sees huge potential in narrow AI that can synthesize content from a super broad training database for economic applications. He also emphasized the challenge in explaining technical aspects of AI to non-technical users.
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The Rise of AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been making incredible strides in recent months, with many experts astonished by its ability to achieve such a high level of intelligence relative to human understanding. Ben Goertzel, founder of Singularity and regarded as the “godfather of AI,” has been studying the space for years and is impressed by its potential.
The Surprising Success of ChatGPT
Goertzel was initially surprised by how well ChatGPT worked, given its simple architecture. However, it is not difficult to understand in retrospect, as the key to its success is the data scale. With a training dataset as vast as the internet, ChatGPT is able to achieve a high level of breadth of intelligence relative to the breadth of an individual human, without dramatic abilities to generalize.
The Limitations of AI Technology
Despite the incredible potential of AI, ChatGPT and similar systems cannot fundamentally leap beyond their training data, and this category of system cannot ever be like a human. There are still limitations to consider, and while GPT-7 may be able to think like a human with all the creativity and innovation, it is unlikely that ChatGPT will ever be able to do so.
Economic and Social Implications
Regardless, this category of technology has huge economic and social implications, even if it never gets extended toward general intelligence. Narrow AI, which can synthesize information based on a broad training database, has an abundance of powerful economic applications. As AI continues to grow and improve, we can expect significant changes and improvements in various industries and aspects of our lives.
