Nvidia Boss Claims AGI Era Has Arrived, But Its Definition Is Debated
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has stated that the era of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has arrived. However, this claim has sparked debate because it is based on a definition considered looser than the general understanding of AGI.
AGI itself is a concept of artificial intelligence (AI) with cognitive abilities equivalent to humans, capable of learning, understanding, and completing various general tasks.
Huang’s statement was made in a podcast with American technology podcaster Lex Fridman. In the discussion, Huang assessed that current AI can already be categorised as AGI, at least in certain contexts.
Fridman defined AGI as AI capable of starting, developing, and running a unicorn startup, a technology startup valued at more than one billion US dollars.
This definition differs from Huang’s previous view. At the DealBook Summit in 2023, Huang described AGI as software able to competitively pass various human intelligence tests, estimating it would only be achieved in five years, or 2028.
In his podcast, Fridman then asked Huang whether AGI, according to this definition of managing a unicorn startup, could be achieved in the next five or twenty years.
Huang responded that the AGI era has actually already arrived.
However, Huang’s claim that the AGI era has arrived is based on a narrower interpretation.
Because according to Huang, AI does not need to build something enduring, does not need to manage people, navigate boards of directors, or sustain a business.
This technology only needs to reach one billion US dollars once.
“You say reaching one billion US dollars, without saying forever,” Huang stated.
The Nvidia boss then described a scenario where AI creates a simple application that goes viral, is used by billions of people at low cost, generates billions of US dollars, and then fades away.
He even compared it to the dot-com era, when many simple websites could achieve massive popularity in a short time.
However, Huang also acknowledged significant limitations in that scenario. He stated that the chance of AI building a company as large as Nvidia is still zero percent.
“The probability of 100,000 agents building Nvidia is zero percent,” he emphasised.
Thus, the Nvidia founder’s claim that the AGI era has arrived is based on quite a loose standard and does not yet reflect the vision of AGI as intelligence equivalent to or surpassing humans, as compiled by KompasTekno from Mashable.