Amidst the conundrum of ‘AI could be safe or not,’ Masayoshi Son, CEO, SoftBank says “Artificial intelligence that is 10,000 times smarter than humans will be here in 10 years.”
On Friday during a rare public appearance he explained that AI can become much smarter than humans in the coming future. Saying this, during the event he also questioned his own purpose in life.
What does Masayoshi Son have to say about AI?
During the event the CEO initially started by talking about the term artificial general intelligence, or AGI, which broadly refers to AI that is smarter than humans. Son explained that this tech has the potential to be one to 10 times smarter than humans. He also expects that Artificial General Intelligence can arrive in the next three-to-five years, earlier than he had anticipated.
Later on he also talked about Artificial Smart Intelligence or ASI. Son explains that ASI can be smarter than humans and will be able to do tasks beyond human imagination. Son discussed how the future can hold various ASI models that will interact with each other, like neurons in a human brain. This will lead to AI that is 10,000 times smarter than any human genius, Son added further. It looks like SoftBank’s CEO made a clear distinction between artificial general intelligence (AGI) and ASI.
Masayoshi Son is SoftBank’s founder, who rose to prominence after an early and profitable investment in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. He positioned SoftBank as a tech visionary with the 2017 launch of the Vision Fund, a massive investment fund focused on backing tech firms. Reportedly some of his investments were successful, however, there were also many high-profile failures, such as office sharing company WeWork.
Is AGI a boon or Bane?
On the positive side, AGI can enhance efficiency, accuracy, and productivity through revolutionising patient care, medical research, and treatment outcomes, among others. However, concerns can arise regarding the negative impacts of AGI, particularly its potential to disrupt human emotions through the use of deepfake AI.
It is believed that ‘empathetic’ machines might be used for emotional blackmailing, using users’ sensitive data for fraudulent activities. Contrary to this Son said that “But if AGI is not much smarter than humans, then we don’t need to change the way of living, we don’t need to change the structure of human lifestyle.”
Furthermore, “SoftBank was founded for what purpose? For what purpose was Masa Son born? It may sound strange, but I think I was born to realize ASI. I am super serious about it,” Son concluded.
Follow FE Tech Bytes on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook
