Beyond generative AI: "AGI" and "ASI"

With the advent of generative AI, the way we work has changed dramatically. Many people have been surprised when they were presented with a quote that assumes the use of generative AI. Depending on the industry, AI is already taking over human jobs.

However, AI researchers and developers say that the current generative AI is still a technology that is still in development, and that they ultimately aim to become "AGI" and "ASI". What exactly are "AGI" and "ASI" that AI researchers and developers are talking about?

"AGI" is an abbreviation for Artificial General Intelligence. In Japanese, it is abbreviated as artificial general intelligence, and literally refers to artificial intelligence that can think in a general way like a human. What does general thinking mean?

For example, when a human cooks a dish, they cut the ingredients, start a fire, fry them, season them, and serve them on a plate while thinking about the most efficient cooking order. However, current generative AI is specialized in a specific area and cannot perform such general tasks in parallel.

But what if AI itself could think independently? It is easy to imagine that it will be possible to drastically reduce the amount of work done by humans.

Furthermore, humans can evolve. If you fail to season a dish, you can make the decision to use less salt the next time. Therefore, we are trying to give AGI the ability to learn from experience like humans. AI that has the decision-making ability to derive the optimal solution from the learning results and execute it.

This is what the future holds for AI currently named AGI. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the company that provides ChatGPT, is currently working on the development of AGI. He has declared that he will spare no expense in terms of development costs, and seems to believe that it is not far off.

The other "ASI" is an abbreviation for Artificial Superintelligence. In Japanese, it is literally called artificial superintelligence. If AGI continues to evolve through self-learning, one day an artificial intelligence far beyond human intelligence will be born. This is ASI.

Humans are already unable to know what theory a generative AI used to reach a conclusion unless they investigate the process in great detail. If this were to happen with ASI, it could potentially solve problems that were previously considered difficult or impossible, using theories that humans would never be able to reach.

However, the birth of ASI would mark the first time in history that humanity would encounter something far smarter than itself. It would be an encounter with the unknown, and fear of this is deeply rooted around the world.