As the world races to create more sophisticated AI, the head of artificial intelligence for the United States intelligence community, John Beieler, has stated that the country’s intelligence agencies must find a means to differentiate between humans and machines.
The Turing Test has been a foundational tool for computer scientists for over fifty years. In his endeavor to find answers regarding computers’ cognitive abilities, renowned computer scientist Alan Turing put out the “imitation game” to assist people in distinguishing computers from humans.
Within public and commercial research institutions around the globe, there has been a recent upsurge in the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) models that can mimic human cognition and performance.
No one is even close to creating artificial general intelligence (AGI), according to Beieler. He believes we have subtly surpassed the Turing Test and other criteria that were considered to be the threshold for conscious artificial intelligence.
A study from the Georgetown University Center for Security and Emerging Technology in July 2023 states that Chinese researchers are attempting to develop artificial general intelligence by combining artificial intelligence with neurology. China sees brain-inspired AI as a stepping stone to general AI, according to the report.
According to Beieler, the American intelligence community is concerned about preventing the worst-case scenario from occurring as a result of the deployment of such sophisticated models. He lamented the lack of a universally applicable metric for evaluating model performance.
Recently, Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI, left the firm to form a new venture he calls Safe Superintelligence Inc. Prior to his departure, Mr. Sutskever issued a dire warning about artificial intelligence systems betraying their makers and causing humanity’s demise.
Beieler stated that he has not really considered the possibility that AI possesses awareness and emotion. He acknowledged that many are attempting to address these concerns, but he has yet to observe any indication that artificial intelligence is progressing toward consciousness.
In an interview, Beieler stated that the American intelligence community saw AI developments more as opportunities than threats.