I see a lot of people here replying on the assumption that AI=LLMs, which I don't think will last for very long. LLMs have unlocked a primitive level of AI faster then many people expected, but it is only that. Where AI is going is surely going to be more complex/structured ANN-based architectures, built for the job (i.e. cognitive architectures), not simplistic pass-thru transformers which were never intended to be more than a seq-2-seq architecture.
I don't see any reason to suppose that we won't achieve human-level/human-like AGI, and do so fairly soon. Transformers may or may not be part of it, but I think we've now seen enough of what different ANN architectures can do, the "unexpected" power of prediction, have sufficient compute, etc, that the joke of AI/AGI always being 50(?) years away no longer applies.
I think achieving real human-level AGI is now within grasp as more of an engineering challenge (and not such a big one!) than an open-ended research problem. Of course (was it Chollet who said this?) LLMs have sucked all the oxygen/funding out of the room, so it may be a while until we see a radical "cognitive architecture" direction shift from any of the big players, although who knows what Sutskever or anyone else operating in stealth mode is working on?!
So, I think the interesting way to interpret the question of "where is this all going" is to assume that we do achieve this, and then ask what does that look like?
One consequence would seem to be that the vast majority of all white collar jobs (including lawyers, accountants, managers - not just tech jobs) will be done by computers, at least in countries where salaries are/were high enough to justify this, probably leading to the need for some type of universal basic income, meaning a big reduction in income for this segment of society. One could dream of an idyllic future where we're all working far less pursuing hobbies, etc, but it seems more likely that we're headed for a dystopian future where the masses live poorly and at the grace of the wealthy elite who are profiting from the AI labor, and only vote for UBI to extent of preventing the mass riots that would threaten their own existence.
While white collar and intellectual jobs disappear, and likely become devalued as the realm of computers rather than what makes humans special, it seems that (until that falls to AI too) manual and human-touch jobs/skills may become more valued and regarded as the new "what makes us special".
Over time even emotions and empathy will likely fall to AI, since these are easy to understand at mechanical level in terms of how they operate in the brain, although it'd take massive advances in robotics for them to be able to deliver the warm soft touch of a human.
I don't see any reason to suppose that we won't achieve human-level/human-like AGI, and do so fairly soon. Transformers may or may not be part of it, but I think we've now seen enough of what different ANN architectures can do, the "unexpected" power of prediction, have sufficient compute, etc, that the joke of AI/AGI always being 50(?) years away no longer applies.
I think achieving real human-level AGI is now within grasp as more of an engineering challenge (and not such a big one!) than an open-ended research problem. Of course (was it Chollet who said this?) LLMs have sucked all the oxygen/funding out of the room, so it may be a while until we see a radical "cognitive architecture" direction shift from any of the big players, although who knows what Sutskever or anyone else operating in stealth mode is working on?!
So, I think the interesting way to interpret the question of "where is this all going" is to assume that we do achieve this, and then ask what does that look like?
One consequence would seem to be that the vast majority of all white collar jobs (including lawyers, accountants, managers - not just tech jobs) will be done by computers, at least in countries where salaries are/were high enough to justify this, probably leading to the need for some type of universal basic income, meaning a big reduction in income for this segment of society. One could dream of an idyllic future where we're all working far less pursuing hobbies, etc, but it seems more likely that we're headed for a dystopian future where the masses live poorly and at the grace of the wealthy elite who are profiting from the AI labor, and only vote for UBI to extent of preventing the mass riots that would threaten their own existence.
While white collar and intellectual jobs disappear, and likely become devalued as the realm of computers rather than what makes humans special, it seems that (until that falls to AI too) manual and human-touch jobs/skills may become more valued and regarded as the new "what makes us special".
Over time even emotions and empathy will likely fall to AI, since these are easy to understand at mechanical level in terms of how they operate in the brain, although it'd take massive advances in robotics for them to be able to deliver the warm soft touch of a human.