Elon Musk is predicting AGI in 2025: should we celebrate this or be concerned? Amal Graafstra discusses AI, AGI, Ray Kurzweil's Technological Singularity, David Woods' "Economic Singularity" & more.

Musk is has estimated a 50% chance that AGI will exist by the end of 2025, which in his words will perform cognitive tasks "better than any human can do". He is also predicting that AI could exceed the collective intelligence of all humans combined by 2029, whereas Ray Kurzweil predicted they'd match human intelligence and pass the Turing test by that date.

Three months ago, Ray released a video reaffirming his prediction for AGI by 2029 and the Singularity for 2045. I went back to "The Singularity is Near" and the graphs show single human intelligence by that date - which puts Musk's prediction for collective human intelligence ahead of schedule.

Overall I think Elon is aligned with Kurzweil's view of Artificial General Intelligence and the Singularity, but Musk appears more focused more on "functional AGI" based on performance completing tasks rather than Kurzweil's approach, which focused more on mapping and synthesizing the functions of the human mind.

In the United States, The White House recently released the "The Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights" as a framework to protect humans from a number of technological threats, and the National Conference of State Legislatures reports that over 25 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia introduced artificial intelligence bills in 2023.

The European Union also recently passed the "Artificial Intelligence Act", which bans the use of AI for applications that threaten threaten citizens’ rights, including biometric categorisation based on sensitive characteristics, untargeted scraping of facial images from video to create facial recognition databases, along emotion recognition in the workplace and schools, social scoring, predictive policing, and the manipulation or exploitation of human behaviour or exploits people’s vulnerabilities.

Elon Musk's prediction as echoes expert opinion and widespread concerns over the fast pace of AI development, and regardless of legislation, it seems like we're moving into a world where humans simply can't compete. I believe Kurzweil and others have predicted a merger of human and machine in the future, which takes us into Amal's area of specialization.

Amal Graafstra is a Book author, TEDx speaker, and CEO of biohacking companies Dangerous Things and VivoKey Technologies. Amal has various RFID and NFC implants in his body that open doors, start vehicles, unlocks his smartgun, and logs into computers.

Prior to his current roles, Amal’s experience includes numerous exective & IT-related roles at firms including Walletmor, Everfind, the medical biotech company Morpheus, Atomic Mobile, Silicon Energy, and more. He joins us today to discuss the intersection of information technology & medicine with a focus on the intersection of biology and technology, and the evolution of our relationship with machines.

LINKS & RESOURCES:

Vivokey Technologies
https://vivokey.com/

Dangerous Things Biohacking
https://dangerousthings.com/

Amal Graafstra at TEDxSFU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DxVWhFLI6E

Amal Graafstra (Personal Website)
https://amal.net/

Exponential Growth of Computing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near

Ray Kurzweil is sticking to his long-held predictions: 2029 for AGI and 2045 for the singularity
https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/18m0dnf/ray_kurzweil_is_sticking_to_his_longheld/

Future Visions: How to Survive and Thrive in the Upcoming Economic Singularity: A Variety of Perspectives
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CTGHJCT4

U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Enlightenment Salon with the OmniFuturists – January 28, 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHIpd4_Hauc&t=614s

The Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights
https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/ai-bill-of-rights/

Artificial Intelligence 2023 Legislation
https://www.ncsl.org/technology-and-communication/artificial-intelligence-2023-legislation