PARIS — According to Robin Li, CEO of Baidu, artificial intelligence that can outperform humans is still over a decade away, despite Elon Musk’s prediction of its imminent arrival.
Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, refers to AI that is as clever or smarter than humans.
This year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted that AGI would be ready by 2026. In January, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that AGI could be produced in the “reasonably close-ish future.”
Li, whose business Baidu is one of China’s main AI players, believes this is unrealistic.
“AGI is still several years away. Today, many people talk about AGI, and many believe that it’s probably two years or five years away. “I believe it is more than ten years away,” Li remarked during a discussion at the VivaTech conference in Paris on Wednesday.
“By definition, AGI means that a machine or AI can be as intelligent as a person, correct? Sometimes smarter. However, we want an AI to be as intelligent as a person. Today’s most powerful models are far from this. And how do you get that level of intelligence? “We do not know.”
Li called for quicker AI development.
My concern is that AI technology isn’t improving quickly enough. Everyone has been surprised by how quickly technology has advanced in recent years. However, it still does not seem fast enough to me. “It’s too slow,” he explained.
AI growth
Last year, Baidu debuted Ernie, a ChatGPT-style chatbot built on the company’s same-named big language model.
Chinese companies such as Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent are investing extensively in AI models, similar to their US counterparts.
Li stated that there is a significant gap between developing technology in the United States and in China. Companies in the United States and Europe are focusing on “coming up with the most powerful, most cutting-edge foundation model,” according to Li. However, he added that in China, the emphasis is on technological applications.
Despite this, Baidu’s CEO stated that there is currently no “killer app” for artificial intelligence.
“In today’s mobile world, we have apps like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Daily active users range from a few hundred million to a billion, right? We haven’t seen this for AI native apps yet. We do not see that in the United States. We don’t see that in China. We don’t see that in Europe,” Li explained.
“What is the appropriate form for AI native applications? What kind of AI native apps will be able to reach 100 million users?”
