Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has clarified that the company has not yet achieved Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), despite swirling rumours about a potential launch, some fuelled by his own recent blog post.
Altman acknowledged the online hype surrounding AGI but urged everyone to “cut their expectations 100 times.” He assured the public that OpenAI is working on “some very cool stuff,” but AGI is not part of the immediate roadmap.
“We are not gonna deploy AGI next month, nor have we built it,” Altman posted on X, adding that “we have some very cool stuff for you but please chill and cut your expectations 100x!”
AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence, is an AI system that’s billed to perform any intellectual task that a human being can. It represents a level of artificial intelligence that can understand, learn, and apply knowledge across various domains, much like a human. Current AI systems like ChatGPT excel in specific tasks like natural language processing but lack the general problem-solving capabilities of humans.
In a blog post titled Reflections, Altman has acknowledged the challenges ahead, saying, “There is still so much to understand, still so much we don’t know, and it’s still so early,” signalling that AGI remains a complex and ongoing task for OpenAI, and as he puts it now, isn’t ready for prime time yet. Any launch timeline, proper or tentative, hasn’t been shared as well.
OpenAI instead is reportedly focusing its efforts on developing an AI super-agent. A formal launch is pegged for as early as January 30. These agents will be able to tackle complex tasks with minimal human intervention, at least in theory, such as write an email on a user’s behalf.
Altman has hinted at the potential impact of such AI agents in his blog post: “We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents join the workforce and materially change the output of companies.”
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