AI godmother Dr. Fei-Fei Li says machines have already begun outperforming people in specific cognitive tasks, even as industry leaders downplay the importance of achieving full human-level intelligence.
In a panel conversation at the FT Future of AI Summit in London, AI pioneer Li says it is scientifically incorrect to treat human-level AI as a single finish line.
Instead, she says machine intelligence already exceeds human capability in certain domains, while remaining fundamentally different from human cognition.
“Parts of machines will supersede human intelligence, and part of the machine intelligence will never be the same as human intelligence. They are built for different purposes.”
She underscores that the threshold has already been crossed in real-world applications, citing language and perception tasks long viewed as uniquely human.
“Part of [superseding] is already here. How many of us can recognize 22,000 objects in the world…? How many adult humans can translate a hundred languages? So I think we should be nuanced and grounded in scientific facts that just like airplanes fly, but they don’t fly like birds.”
But Li notes that AI remains a tool best used to amplify human creativity and ingenuity.
“Machine-based intelligence will do a lot of powerful things, but there is a profound place for human intelligence to always be critical in our society.”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang echoes the idea that milestone debates miss the real point. According to Huang, it doesn’t matter if AI is already smarter than humans because, at the end of the day, humans will harness the technology to solve many of society’s problems.
“We have enough general intelligence to translate the technology into an enormous amount of society-useful applications in the next coming years. We’re doing it today. I think one: we’re already there. Two, the other part of the answer is it doesn’t matter because at this point it’s a bit of an academic answer.
The technology is going to keep getting better, and we’re going to apply the technology to solve a lot of very important things from this point forward. I think the answer is it doesn’t matter.”
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at CapitalAI Daily are not investment advice. Investors should do their own due diligence before making any decisions involving securities, cryptocurrencies, or digital assets. Your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any losses you may incur are your responsibility. CapitalAI Daily does not recommend the buying or selling of any assets, nor is CapitalAI Daily an investment advisor. See our Editorial Standards and Terms of Use.