Real Information – Artificial Intelligence: the AIIP AI blog
By Arthur Weiss
Editor’s note: This is part of a series covering what’s new and, more importantly, how infopreneurs can maximize the benefits of AI tools.
The previous two posts focused on Artificial Intelligence – defining what it is and showing that it covers much more than Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT. In many ways these are interim steps to our AI future – with all the possibilities offered. It’s what the AI companies are working towards.
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI)
The next milestone for AI development is Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) – AI that matches or surpasses human cognitive abilities across a broad range of tasks, unlike today’s AI tools that are limited to specific functions. Several tests have been devised to measure AI product intelligence abilities. The most well-known is the Turing Test, which was proposed in 1950 by Alan Turing. Passing the Turing test would mean one could not distinguish between natural language responses from a computer and from a human being. Today, some AI models are approaching this threshold.
Other benchmarks include the ability to pass higher-level / university exams – many LLMs can already do this. However, no AI has yet passed the Wozniak Coffee Test which requires an AI-controlled robot to enter the average American home, locate and operate a coffee machine, find the coffee, add the water, select a suitable mug and then brew a decent cup of coffee – including adding milk from the fridge and a spoon of sugar if requested.
This highlights the distinction between AGI and the next stage: ASI or Artificial Super Intelligence. While AI programs such as AlphaGo can defeat the world’s best Go players, that’s their only capability. ASI, in contrast, would surpass human cognitive abilities in multiple areas. While it is likely that ASI will emerge within the next 50 years, it’s unlikely to do so in the next decade. This is where the real threats exist. Imagine asking an ASI to solve climate change.
ASI is where the real risks arise. Consider a scenario where an ASI is tasked with solving climate change. Assume the ASI determines that the root cause of climate change is human activity and that the simplest way of stopping any further change is to eliminate all humans responsible. If given sufficient autonomy, it could take steps to execute such a plan!
Down to Earth
This, and the previous two blog posts, have looked at the AI topic focusing on what AI is and isn’t and at its potential. I have not yet, however, considered how infopreneurs can use AI and get the best out of the common AI tools. AI technology is being integrated into pretty much all software now – so it’s important to know how to get the best out of what’s there. This can be for online searching – perhaps using Perplexity.ai, or for creating videos – with tools like Invideo.io, but soon with Sora from OpenAI or Veo from Google. You may want to summarise information or create images or presentations, and AI can speed up what you do and make it much more professional. Often the starting point is “prompting” the AI tool, i.e. telling it what you want. There’s a skill to this – it can seem easy but if you pose a request in the wrong way, you may not get what you want. Also, not all AI tools are the same – some work better than others for particular tasks, and the chances are that by the time you’ve read these posts, things will have changed, so another task is keeping up to date so that you stay ahead of clients, competitors, and potential clients. Arthur Weiss has been an infopreneur for almost 30 years. He founded AWARE in 1995 after a career at the business information company Dun & Bradstreet. He specializes in competitive and marketing intelligence using open sources (OSINT). Recently he has pivoted to new areas, including exploring how AI tools can support infopreneurs. His latest insights can be read in International Marketing & Competitive Intelligence and Computers in Libraries magazines. He may be contacted at a.weiss@aware.co.uk.
