(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Greg Brockman, the head of tech startup OpenAI, told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a roundtable on artificial-intelligence safety that man and machine will merge, forming a “singularity” in 2030, according to the Discern Report.
The eye-opening remarks came during a panel discussion last week that also featured billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and physicist Max Tegmark of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Brockman said that in 2029, AI will surpass human intelligence, and by 2030, man will become one with the machines.
Eventually, computers will reach a level so far beyond human capability that it will be necessary to distinguish between artificial general intelligence (AGI) and artificial superintelligence (ASI), researchers say.
While that may send out alarm bells for some—particulary given the short window of time he projected, given the rapid advancement in machine-learning technology—Brockman claimed the project was worthy of pursuit because it could lead to the creation of “heaven” on earth.
“I think this whole arc, in my mind, is all about paradigm shift, right?” he said.
“And I think that, even the question of what would that heaven, post-AGI, positive future look like?” he added. “I think even that is hard for us to imagine what the true upside could be.”
Fortunately, for those who can’t wait to find out what mysteries used to be relegated to the afterlife, the wait to find out is less than seven years away, according to Brockman.
He estimated that “2030 is when the merge happens,” pointing to one of Musk’s recent projects in particular.
“So we’ve got Neuralink coming—and uh, you know, maybe other systems like that,” Brockman said.
According to the OpenAI guru, the 2030 prediction, while mocked at first, is now “basically common wisdom.”
Musk was less optimistic about what might happen when machines surpassed humans, warning that it was unclear what would be the fate of the human race after superintelligence was created.
“You know, sometimes digital superintelligence is called, like, a singularity—like a black hole,” he said.
“Because just like with a black hole, it’s difficult to predict what happens after you pass the event horizon,” he added. “… And we are currently circling the event horizon of the black hole that is digital superintelligence.”
What exactly the merging of man and machine might look like remains unclear.
The prediction goes hand-in-hand with a report from earlier this month, claiming that AI bots will generate the majority of online content by 2026.
Further complicating things, the so-called superintelligence will nonetheless take its marching orders from partisans who wish to enshrine in it political correctness, to be enforced by the all-powerful machines.
