Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google's DeepMind AI research laboratory has issued a chilling prediction regarding the future of artificial intelligence that aligns with both worries and aspirations surrounding advancements in the field.
Artificial intelligence is by far the biggest focal point in the world of tech right now, and is arguably the most consequential innovation since the invention of the internet in the 1980s.
Almost every big tech company is dedicating significant resources to the development of AI tools, with OpenAI's ChatGPT leading the charge since it's groundbreaking release in November 2022.
AI development, particularly in the generative form, is far from static and remains constantly innovating and developing its skills, and rapid changes in the next five years could provide worrying developments for the future of humanity.
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As reported by Fortune, DeepMind CEO Hassabis has outlined that artificial general intelligence (AGI) has the potential to rival the complex capabilities of humans, and that could be achieved within the next five to ten years.
AGI has been the end goal for many big AI developers, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman making this his particular goal, aligning it with a 'Manhattan Project' for the world of tech when founding the nonprofit company.
"Today's [AI] systems, they're very passive, but there's still a lot of things they can't do," illustrated Hassabis during a recent DeepMind briefing, "but over the next five to ten years, a lot of those capabilities will start coming to the fore and we'll start moving towards what we call artificial general intelligence."
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This would render AI capable of the complexities that are currently only achievable by humans, and would dramatically enhance its viability in workplaces.
Many are worried that this would lead to mass job losses, alongside the large number of roles that are currently at risk of redundancy thanks to AI, and this could also lead to wider societal concerns.
Geoffrey Hinton, largely known as the 'Godfather of AI' who also previously worked at DeepMind, has outlined that developments in the artificial intelligence field will create a 'fertile ground for fascism' as the wealth gap between the richest and poorest individuals increases to a scale never seen before.
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Hinton has also warned that rapid advancements in the technology world have raised the risk of humanity being completely wiped out within the next 30 years, as "we've never had to deal with things more intelligence than ourselves before."
Hassabis has indicated that we're still a fair distance from the possibilities of AGI, adding: "These systems are very impressive at certain things. But there are other things they can't do yet, and we've still got quite a lot of research work to go before that."
It's hard to not see the five to ten year timescale as unrealistic considering the amount of attention and money that has been pushed in the AI space in recent years though, and this will only likely continue as further advancements are made.