Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said on Friday that artificial general intelligence — by some definitions — could arrive in at least five years.
Huang, who heads the world’s leading maker of artificial intelligence chips used to build systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, was responding to a question at an economic forum at Stanford University about Silicon Valley’s long-standing How long will it take to achieve one of the set goals? Creating computers that can think like humans.
Huang said much of the answer depends on how the target is defined. If the definition is the ability to pass a human test, Huang said, artificial general intelligence (AGI) will come soon.
“If I gave AI… every single test you can possibly imagine, you make that list of tests and put it in front of the computer science industry, and I’m predicting that in five years’ time, we’ll will do well on each.” Single, said Huang, whose firm closed above $2 trillion in market value for the first time on Friday.
So far, AI can pass tests like legal bar exams, but still struggles with specialized medical tests like gastroenterology. But Huang said he should be able to pass any of them in five years.
But by other definitions, Huang said, AGI may be a long way off, because scientists still don’t agree on how the human brain works.
“So, it’s hard to achieve as an engineer” because engineers need defined goals, Huang said.
Huang also addressed the question of how many more chip factories, called “fabs” in the industry, are needed to support the expansion of the AI industry. Media reports say OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman believes many more fabs are needed.
More will be needed, but each chip will get better over time, which serves to limit the number of chips needed, Huang said.
“We will need more fabs. However, remember that we are also improving the algorithms and (AI) processing a lot over time,” Huang said. “It’s not like computing performance is what it is today, and that’s why the demand is so high. I’m improving computing a millionfold in 10 years.”