Is AI approaching human-level intelligence?
Published: 03:01 PM,Jan 27,2025 | EDITED : 07:01 PM,Jan 27,2025
Last week we discussed whether the artificial intelligence (AI) will replace all our jobs. I concluded the article that AI would act as a companion, partner, and/or a supporter but not take all our jobs away (at least for those who regularly continue to upskill and update their knowledge and skill base).
Some jobs will be taken away, YES, but more would be created as a return too. Please note the word 'all' in my last article. My emphasis is that jobs would be replaced, but not all, and mostly the jobs that can be autonomous, routine, and/or repetitive at most.
Others would probably gradually be replaced as the technology heavyweights (e.g., OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, NVidia, etc.) continue to advance their AI models. I will focus on the type of jobs that may be replaced in my future articles, but for today, I would like to focus on whether AI is literally approaching human-level intelligence.
Would AI reach our human intelligence? Particularly in the way a context is understood, common sense is reasoned, learning is undertaken, creation or innovation is made, and lastly the most questioned area of all, the emotional intelligence of a machine—i.e., do they actually have any feelings? Given a context (situation, event, circumstances, etc.), a human would understand and may deal with it based on an experience that happened in the past and/or emotions that he/she felt during the same; however, a machine (powered by an AI, of course) would deal with it based on some rules and algorithms taught by us, humans. It would not go out of the boundaries of data/learning/rules it was trained upon.
The same applies to common sense. Machines would only deduce or conclude a matter based on what it has been programmed to understand (again via the massive data it was trained with). Humans would utilize real-life experience without actually having knowledge of the same, based on a common sense that a machine lacks.
What more? Machines would require a lot of data, lots of training, and lots of examples to be even considered smart, as to the level you mostly see and experience today out of all the AI applications available in the market. Humans may require a few good sources to learn and generalize (of course utilizing experience too). Moreover, humans have real feelings, yet machines act based on algorithms. They (AI) too cannot understand or take unspoken words as inputs for their operation.
Lastly, while AI can truly generate beautiful content (be it video, voice, picture, etc.), it depends on patterns of existing massive amounts of data, and not original/new things as humans can do and come up with. Machines lack the capacity to think beyond their programmed or learned data, period. In brief, artificial intelligence can mimic, act, and assist human intelligence in many ways, but it doesn’t replicate the depth of human natural abilities.
To conclude my article this week, I would like to note that while AI has indeed made significant progress and remarkable strides (e.g., OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini as proof in the pudding), it is still not yet at the level of intelligence that humans possess. AI operates and is trained on data (supplied by humans), works and bases on algorithms (created by humans), and computes using hardware (again created by humans). Whereas we humans have emotions, experience, and real creativity, to name a few things that AI cannot truly replicate today.
While some researchers predict that AI will catch up with the intelligence in the not-so-near future, the prediction remains uncertain as of this date. Until we catch up again next week, continue upskilling and don’t worry about AI catching up to your excellence. You’re human; it’s just a smart robot.
Some jobs will be taken away, YES, but more would be created as a return too. Please note the word 'all' in my last article. My emphasis is that jobs would be replaced, but not all, and mostly the jobs that can be autonomous, routine, and/or repetitive at most.
Others would probably gradually be replaced as the technology heavyweights (e.g., OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, NVidia, etc.) continue to advance their AI models. I will focus on the type of jobs that may be replaced in my future articles, but for today, I would like to focus on whether AI is literally approaching human-level intelligence.
Would AI reach our human intelligence? Particularly in the way a context is understood, common sense is reasoned, learning is undertaken, creation or innovation is made, and lastly the most questioned area of all, the emotional intelligence of a machine—i.e., do they actually have any feelings? Given a context (situation, event, circumstances, etc.), a human would understand and may deal with it based on an experience that happened in the past and/or emotions that he/she felt during the same; however, a machine (powered by an AI, of course) would deal with it based on some rules and algorithms taught by us, humans. It would not go out of the boundaries of data/learning/rules it was trained upon.
The same applies to common sense. Machines would only deduce or conclude a matter based on what it has been programmed to understand (again via the massive data it was trained with). Humans would utilize real-life experience without actually having knowledge of the same, based on a common sense that a machine lacks.
What more? Machines would require a lot of data, lots of training, and lots of examples to be even considered smart, as to the level you mostly see and experience today out of all the AI applications available in the market. Humans may require a few good sources to learn and generalize (of course utilizing experience too). Moreover, humans have real feelings, yet machines act based on algorithms. They (AI) too cannot understand or take unspoken words as inputs for their operation.
Lastly, while AI can truly generate beautiful content (be it video, voice, picture, etc.), it depends on patterns of existing massive amounts of data, and not original/new things as humans can do and come up with. Machines lack the capacity to think beyond their programmed or learned data, period. In brief, artificial intelligence can mimic, act, and assist human intelligence in many ways, but it doesn’t replicate the depth of human natural abilities.
To conclude my article this week, I would like to note that while AI has indeed made significant progress and remarkable strides (e.g., OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini as proof in the pudding), it is still not yet at the level of intelligence that humans possess. AI operates and is trained on data (supplied by humans), works and bases on algorithms (created by humans), and computes using hardware (again created by humans). Whereas we humans have emotions, experience, and real creativity, to name a few things that AI cannot truly replicate today.
While some researchers predict that AI will catch up with the intelligence in the not-so-near future, the prediction remains uncertain as of this date. Until we catch up again next week, continue upskilling and don’t worry about AI catching up to your excellence. You’re human; it’s just a smart robot.