Superintelligence is super-freaky … if the wrong person, company, or nation gets it first. Or, maybe, if humanity achieves it at all …
From my latest at Forbes:
AGI researcher Ben Goertzel says we are likely just a couple of years away from artificial general intelligence, and that a global race is already underway to develop it.
In a recent conversation, Goertzel identified four primary competitors: U.S. government interests, major U.S. tech companies, China and its tech ecosystem, and open-source AI communities. Whoever reaches AGI first will have enormous influence over how superintelligence is deployed and controlled, with implications for economic power, personal freedom, surveillance, and governance.
While some leaders are calling for a pause on superintelligence development due to risks of job displacement, loss of civil liberties, and even existential threat, Goertzel believes AGI is essentially inevitable because of the value it creates.
His preferred path is a decentralized open-source AGI that distributes benefits broadly, though such openness also increases the risk of misuse. The future, he argues, depends less on whether AGI arrives and more on who controls it and for what purpose.
Get the full story in my post at Forbes … and check out the TechFirst podcast I did with Ben.