Meta joins OpenAI and Google in the race for artificial general intelligence – 01/18/2024 at 8:53 pm

Meta (Facebook, Instagram) boss Mark Zuckerberg announced that his group is now working on so-called “general” artificial intelligence (AI), that is, computer systems equipped with human cognitive abilities, such as OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.

“We came to the conclusion that to build the products we want to build, we have to work towards general intelligence,” the billionaire said in an interview published Thursday by The Verge, an American publication specializing in technology.

“I think it’s important to figure this out because many of the best researchers want to work on more ambitious problems,” he added.

The idea of ​​general AI was popularized by the Californian start-up OpenAI. It surprised the world in late 2022 by launching ChatGPT, the best-known generative AI software (generate content on simple queries in everyday language).

Sam Altman, its boss, defined it as technology that would work in programs “generally more intelligent than humans”.

The concept remains vague: Nick Clegg, head of international affairs at Meta, noted in Davos on Thursday that “there is no consensus on what general AI means.”

“Ask computer scientists to define (it) and you’ll get a different definition of each one,” he pointed out.

The emergence of generative AI in the past year has led to intense competition between tech giants.

Microsoft (a major investor in OpenAI), Google and Meta have used numerous tools and want to attract the best engineers.

In society, this technology arouses a lot of enthusiasm but also a huge wave of concern from observers and authorities, who fear in particular that it will lead to the loss of countless jobs or that it will multiply the forces of ill intent. actors

First, if humans manage to endow machines with intelligence comparable to that of humans, but with much greater computing capabilities.

OpenAI says it wants to gradually create general AI with the aim of benefiting all of humanity. It relies on its large-scale use of computer models to detect and correct problems.

“I think one day we’ll build something that would be considered general AI, by whatever vague definition you want,” Sam Altman said at Davos. “The world will have a two-week panic attack, and then everyone will go back to their normal lives.”