DeepMind Technologies, the Alphabet-owned AI research lab, recently made waves when its CEO, Demis Hassabis, gave an interview to CBS’ “60 minutes” and spoke about the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Hassabis suggested that AI may one day become self-aware. He spoke about how philosophical communities have struggled to come up with a universally accepted definition of consciousness, and whether AI may one day be able to achieve it.
The DeepMind team consists of Hassabis, former Google engineer, Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman, all of whom founded the company in London, in 2010. Their aim was to create AI systems that are capable of certain tasks with human-level efficiency. DeepMind was acquired by Google in 2014, and later, transferred to Alphabet after Google’s restructuring.
The company has tasted success in achieving a computer program that successfully beat a human-champion in a board game that is harder than chess. This potential AI has also been utilized to make medical breakthroughs, like predicting protein shapes with a high level of accuracy, something that researchers had been struggling to figure out for years.
There have been rumors afloat regarding the development of an AI-bot by Google, which could allegedly gain sentience. Rumors that were later squashed by tech-experts, as they revealed that the AI simply had the capacity to sound believable. In the wake of OpenAI’s launch of the ChatGPT chatbot in October, followed by AI-tools being developed by the likes of Google and Microsoft, the rapid development of AI has been seen in recent months.
Hassabis was asked to comment whether or not users will be prepared to accept AI. He replied that “‘we’re an infinitely adaptable species’, and compared the situation to the launch of smartphones, which was adapted to by humans eventually. He went on to stress his belief that AI would be “the most important invention that humanity will ever make”.
The potential of AI has been understood by the AI research community, and it does bode well for the future development of AI, that DeepMind’s CEO was forward-thinking enough to understand the situational nuances and prepared to speak about them on the matter. The recent development of the AI-tools, and the acceptance of humans are all preparations for the development of AI in the future. Allowing AI to become self aware is something that is still very far away and will take a lot of research and development.
