Large language models like GPT-4 are transforming the AI landscape, capturing the attention, curiosity, and fear of the general public. Even prompting calls to pause development. GPT-4's capabilities are surpassing our expectations and challenging our ideas about learning, cognition, and ultimately the nature of intelligence. A recent study by Microsoft Research concludes that GPT-4 is an early, yet still incomplete, artificial, general intelligence system. This is an extraordinary claim. AGI is effectively the holy grail of AI research. We weren't supposed to achieve this for decades. If this makes you uncomfortable or confused, we're going to dive into the details in this video and figure out what the hell is going on. We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI. First of all, what is AGI and why is it such a big deal? There are three main types of AI. There's narrow AI or weak AI, which is designed to perform specific tasks or solve particular problems. It can outperform humans in this task, but it lacks the ability to generalize its learning to new or unrelated problems. This is the kind of AI we're used to dealing with. Chatbots, recommendation systems, spatial recognition software, even self-driving cars. There we go AI. There we can puny. We can puny AI. General AI is referred to as strong AI. This refers to an artificial intelligence system that can understand, learn, and apply its intelligence to a wide range of tasks. Much like a human can, it is not limited to a specific domain, and it can adapt its learning to new situations and problems. The last type of AI is a super intelligence. This is a hypothetical form of intelligence that would surpass human intelligence in virtually every aspect. It could outperform humans in Indians' electoral tasks, including creativity, problem solving, and decision making. Super intelligence is distinct from general intelligence, as it implies a level of capability far beyond human comprehension. The rogue AI's that take over the world and pop culture that we're probably all familiar with are of the super intelligence variety. We're nowhere near that. You don't need to worry about the robot apocalypse. At least not yet. So what's one is GPT-4? If you ask the people at OpenAI, they will say it's an NLP, a natural language processing system, a form of narrow intelligence. I think that GPT-4, although quite impressive, is definitely not an AJABA. Isn't it remarkable we're having this debate? Even GPT-4 will tell you. As a language model, I am an example of narrow or specialized AI, designed to perform a specific task, generating human-like text based on the input I receive. It was built for a very specific purpose, dealing with the ambiguity and complexity of human language, handling variations in syntax and grammar, and accounting for cultural and contextual factors that affect meaning. It's a narrow AI, but the thing that is surprising everyone in the point of this paper is that it's showing signs or sparks of being so much more. Why would they think that? Why do these researchers think that this is the start of an AGI? So the paper is 154 pages long. I'll link it below in case you're interested in reading it, but I'm going to focus on three specific areas. At last. Cognitive flexibility refers to an individual's capability to adapt their thinking and apply knowledge across different context or disciplines. It is a key measure of intelligence as it showcases the capacity to handle diverse and complex situations. Not only does GPT-4 demonstrate a high level of proficiency in different domains, but it is also able to combine skills and concepts, showing an impressive comprehension of complex ideas. They tested this ability in a few ways, but the one I found most interesting was when they asked it to prove there are infinitely many primes in the literary style of Shakespeare. Now does not understand, my friend, there simply is no upper end to primes. Those numbers are indivisible, no matter if it seems impossible. But how does thou so surely know? To prove this truth, what can thou show? Consider this, my doubtful peer, a clever proof that will make clear, assume that there's a final price. I think that's impressive. Maybe you're harder to impress though. Next, the researchers tested theory of mind. Theory of mind refers to the ability to understand and attribute the mental states, emotions, and intentions to oneself and others. This ability allows individuals to predict and interpret the behavior of others in social situations. The researchers tested GPT-4 in a variety of social situations, and found it was able to infer mental state in others. Basically, GPT-4 is passing psychological tests that young human children would pass. It's not supposed to be able to do that. Again, this is all from a text model. All it's doing is predicting the next word based on the previous words ahead of it. Theory of mind implies consciousness. Do you think GPT-4 is conscious? I think no, but do you think GPT-4 is conscious? I think it knows how to fake consciousness. Yes. How to fake consciousness? It definitely can answer as if it were. Yeah, and then it starts getting weird. A huge caveat to this discussion is that we, as humans, don't even understand our own consciousness. Because consciousness is a terrible curse. One of the prevailing hypotheses in neuroscience is that general intelligence and consciousness are emergent behaviors. They appear when you connect neurons together in sufficiently complex networks. Artificial neural networks mimic the structure of the human brain and treat nodes kind of like neurons and form complex interconnections based on its training data. So, if we accept the hypothesis that consciousness and general intelligence is an emergent property of sufficiently advanced neural networks, it is possible that AGI could spontaneously appear in a large language model like GPT-4. This only raises more questions, though. The human brain is an incredibly complex system with billions of neurons and trillions of connections. It is the most complex structure in the universe as far as we know. Replicating this level of complexity in an artificial system is a monumental task. This is why nobody expected consciousness or general intelligence from an LLM like GPT-4. While GPT-4 is an incredible achievement and probably the most advanced model that's released to the public, it's nowhere near the complexity of the human brain. Yet here we are, having a debate about whether this statistical language model is conscious, is intelligent? What? Why does it matter, though? Whether or not GPT-4 is conscious is fundamental to our understanding of our own consciousness and how our minds and sense of self-work. If it's possible to have a general intelligence system without consciousness or without agency or without intrinsic motivation, it might become challenging to align AGI with human values and ensure their actions are ethical and inline with human goals. One example of this could be from an AI without consciousness or agency on a various actor asking the AI to engineer a bio-weapon, which is definitely within the realm of possibility. Without consciousness or intrinsic motivation, AGI might not consider the broader implications of its actions. We can try to put up guardrails to prevent things like this, but that hasn't really worked out so far. We thought we were years or decades away from even approaching something like artificial general intelligence, because we aren't anywhere near replicating the complexity of the human brain. However, based on what we're seeing now, we might not have to approach that complexity. Consciousness, intelligence, whether they go together or not might be way more common than we previously thought. What does that mean for us? Is this the modern age's Copernicus moment where we realize our intelligence isn't special, where we realize we aren't the center of the universe? I don't know. And really, nobody does. That's what makes this so mind-blowing. We don't know what's going on. Given the exponential pace of AI development, figuring this shit out has suddenly become important and urgent. If you've created a conscious machine, it's not the history of man. That's the history of gods.