Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will be a big leap in tech. Some of us may witness this during our lifetimes. It will turn the world as we know it upside-down.
Today’s artificial intelligence (AI) excels at specific tasks (“narrow AI”). However, AGI would perform as well as most humans at various activities or even surpass them. Now, AI systems – even generative AI (GenAI) like ChatGPT – are impressive but still limited “narrow AI”. They can write text, recognize images and understand spoken words. But they can’t generalize across tasks without massive retraining yet. AGI promises this flexible intelligence.
Moving from today’s “narrow AI” to AGI will be a wild ride bringing chances and challenges with it. And this “sci-fi” future is fast approaching: More and more “industry experts” believe we’re only a few years away from “singularity”, when AI will reach human-level intelligence. AGI’s “expected time of arrival” has been (unsurprisingly) accelerated by the latest developments around ChatGPT & Co. These took many “experts” off-guard – a “hallmark” of “exponential technologies” like AI.
Anyway, let’s jump into the seven “AGI use cases” or areas where it will affect our lives, work, education etc. profoundly. Ready for some crystal ball gazing? 😉
Table of Contents
Humanoid Robots are Coming
AGI will “level up” robots and autonomous vehicles (like self-driving cars, drones etc.) to become useful allies for us in all life areas – from housework to “workwork”.
With “fine motor skills”, robots with AGI will perform complex tasks like cooking or assembling delicate parts, which is a big step from what they can do now. Understanding and responding to human gestures and expressions will make robots more intuitive and helpful in daily life. They will be capable of learning from and imitating humans which – spoiler alert – is one of the pragmatic reasons why robots tend to look like us. Input from multimodal sensors, fast (edge) computing and connectivity (5G+) will empower them to react in split seconds and navigate complex situations.
Speaking of “cyborgs”: An early example of this potential is the startup “Figure,” (valued at $2.6bn in latest funding round) which is building realistic humanoid robots to work in human environments (e.g., for household chores – yay). These robots could change industries (and my life…) by taking on tasks that need a high level of dexterity and awareness.
Healthcare: Dead-on Diagnoses
AGI could transform medicine completely, from diagnoses to treatments and even prevention, for a better and longer life for all of us. Sounds attractive, right?
For example, by analyzing huge amounts of medical data to find complications which humans might miss. It could create highly personalized treatment plans based on individual patient data, ensuring everyone gets the best care while minimizing unwanted side effects. AGI’s ability to detect early signs of (genetic) diseases (e.g. diabetes) could also save lives and improve life quality for people with predispositions.
For instance, a first glimpse into this future offers an innovative initiative from China, where recently a new “Agent Hospital” opened. It is powered by “AI doctors” capable of treating 10,000 patients every few days. This task would take “real” human doctors years. While still in an early developmental stage, their team expects to reach “readiness for practical use with real patients” already by the end of 2024″ in less than a year. Let’s see.
Personalized Learning Journeys
AGI could transform education by creating more tailored learning experiences for you. It can analyze each student’s progress and adapt content to ensure no one is left behind, addressing knowledge gaps more effectively.
As an indicative example of what this may look like in the future: Khan Academy’s new AI tool, Khanmigo, powered by OpenAI’s GPT, works as a virtual tutor and teacher assistant. It engages students with interactive dialogues (“Socratic method”), promoting critical thinking rather than just “giving away” the answers to the assignments like, e.g., ChatGPT would.
Khanmigo also supports teachers with fast and comprehensive insights into their students’ performance as well as support in further administrative tasks in the (virtual) “classroom”.
I really wonder what the education system will look like in 10 years… What do you think? Will everyone just go through their individual digital curriculum created by AI with virtual “teachers”? Where’s the “human factor” in all of this?
(Truly) Efficient Financial Markets
Most textbooks claim financial markets are already efficient. Given the regular financial crises and human restraints like “limited rationality”, I doubt that: Knowledge was, is and always will be power.
AGI could, however, bring financial markets one step closer to efficiency by processing and interpreting massive datasets, finding trends and offering deep insights. For example, using social media sentiment and complex trading algorithms, AGI could lead to new market paradigms. At the same time, it could also have the exact opposite effect of course, if this technology is only used by select few.
An early example of advanced systems in practice is BlackRock’s “Aladdin” platform which uses big data to optimize their investment strategy. Aladdin analyzes unstructured data, like global economic data to spot indicators of market movements. This aims to improve their overall portfolio management.
Accelerating Research & Innovation
AGI will change research by forming new hypotheses and experiments by synthesizing its vast amounts of knowledge. This could lead to desirable advancements across all domains, e.g., medicine, physics, materials science etc.
BioNTech, as an indicative example, has used the advanced AI systems of their subsidiary InstaDeep for drug discovery. The collaboration speeds up drug and solution development, for example of vaccines or early warning systems against diseases like Covid. This shows how AGI could drive scientific breakthroughs, resulting in novel solutions to global problems. This would reach far beyond medicine to many other challenges like global warming (or even anti-aging/mortality?).
“With great power, of course, also comes great responsibility”: The constructive forces of AGI must always be balanced against its destructive capabilities… Which one do you think outweighs the other?
“Fourth Industrial Revolution”
AGI will drive Industry 4.0 and make all operations more efficient (in real-time). It’d adjust relevant parameters dynamically based on a 360° view that includes process sensor data and their context, e.g., customer demand or external events. This tech could even enable total supply chain optimization, integrating data from various stages to synchronize operations.
Applications like predictive maintenance already today use statistical methods to predict machines’ failures before they occur, reducing downtime. AGI would take this one level further. It would incorporate more data points and deeper contextual understanding to perform more sophisticated analyses of the machines and their operations.
As a forerunner of what this industrial future may look like: Amazon’s use of over 750,000 robots in their logistics is a prime example. These robots – working “hand in hand” with humans – handle diverse tasks from sorting packages to transporting goods, improving efficiency and safety.
Perfectly Personalized Business Relationships
AGI is set to change how businesses connect with their customers. AGI could analyze consumer behavior and preferences deeply (which, frankly, also has an eerie ring to it). This could enable highly tailored interactions and shorter response times, helping customers resolve their issues better and more efficiently (once they get accustomed to interacting with bots primarily…)
As a forerunning example, Klarna’s AI assistant already hints at what AGI could do: They report that their GenAI chatbot, powered by OpenAI, can handle millions of customer interactions, cuts down customers’ issue resolution time from 11 mins to <2 mins on average. Klarna claims this system could do the work of 700 full-time agents efficiently and with similar (vs. human agents) customer satisfaction levels. (I always take self-reports with a grain of salt though.)
AGI won’t just “process data”; it will understand context, emotions and preferences. An unprecedented level of mass personalization will become the norm. I’m not all optimistic about that: Do we want to give up all our privacy? I’m afraid, The infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal was just the beginning…
Conclusion: Feeling the AGI Already?
One thing is clear: AGI will reshape all industries, businesses, jobs and everyday life. This change brings opportunities and challenges…
To get ready for an AGI-driven future, people and organizations should focus on cooperation. This involves tech businesses, policymakers, educators etc. working together to create innovative solutions while protecting societal interests. There are many challenges around A(G)I, e.g. considerations like UBI to combat potential widespread job losses, ensuring AI stays “aligned” with human values and does not go rogue, risks of hallucinations and deepfakes etc.
Continuous learning and adaptation helps individuals and workers (you and me) transition into their new roles: Check out my article on strategies to “survive and thrive” in the age of AI. 🙂
We looked at “use cases of AGI” but is this even the right “thinking model” for such a novel and powerful technology? Provocatively put, what will be the “use case of humans”? What even is intelligence really and aren’t there aspects of human intelligence that a machine couldn’t emulate?
What “use cases” of AGI are you most excited (or worried) about? If any of this resonates, I’m keen to hear from you in the comments and feel free to share.
Cheers,
John
What do you think?