When Will AI Be Smarter Than Humans? Don’t Ask: Gideon Lichfield

If you’ve heard the term artificial general intelligence, or AGI, it probably makes you think of a humanish intelligence, like the honey-voiced AI love interest in the movie Her, or a superhuman one, like Skynet from The Terminator. At any rate, something science-fictional and far off.

But now a growing number of people in the tech industry and even outside it are prophesying AGI or “human-level” AI in the very near future.

These people may believe what they are saying, but it is at least partly hype designed to get investors to throw billions of dollars at AI companies. ...