Fueled by hype and excitement around artificial intelligence, semiconductor company Nvidia (NVDA) -) skyrocketed both to fame and a trillion-dollar market cap earlier this year. The firm, which makes the chips that power AI software, was and remains instrumental to everything from OpenAI's ChatGPT to Elon Musk's Tesla.
As ChatGPT and its competitors have become familiar to an ever-growing number of consumers, and as nearly every Big Tech company races to beat its competitors in producing better iterations of the tech, conversations around AI safety have spilled over into the public domain.
The central point of many of these safety conversations — helped along by unfounded claims made by Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman of existential AI risks — revolves around artificial general intelligence (AGI), a hypothetical AI that would have intelligence equal to that of a human.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, speaking at the New York Times' annual DealBook Summit, said that such an evolution will be here soon.
Today, Huang said, the AI sector is progressing quickly. But current models are not intelligent: "We're very good at perception today, but there's a whole bunch of things that we can't do yet. We can't reason yet."
Asked when he expects AI models to be capable of reasoning, Huang said: "We'll see," noting that "just about everybody" is working on developing reasoning capabilities.
Indeed, OpenAI's mission revolves around the development of a safe artificial superintelligence.
Depending on how AGI is defined, Huang said, such an AI could well be achieved within the next five years.
"If we define AGI as a piece of software, a computer that can take a whole bunch of tests, and these tests reflect basic intelligence, and by completing those tests deliver results that are fairly competitive to a normal human, I would say that within the next five years, you'll see AIs that can achieve those tests," he said.
Related: The ethics of artificial intelligence: A path toward responsible AI
AGI isn't here yet
Many experts — who are far more concerned with such active harms of bias, algorithmic discrimination, misinformation and hallucination — remain unconvinced that AGI will ever be possible.
"I believe that we should address the harms that we are seeing in the world right now that are very concrete," prominent AI researcher Dr. Suresh Venkatasubramanian told TheStreet in September. "And I do not believe that these arguments about future risks are either credible or should be prioritized over what we're seeing right now."
"There's no science in X risk."
Part of the issue inherent to figuring out AGI is that human intelligence is complex, nuanced and involves far more than just linguistics — AI expert Dr. John Licato told TheStreet in July that AI models would need to be able to process many more types of data, including visual, auditory and real-world sensory data, in order to move closer to AGI.
"I would say it's realistic to have something fully human level within the next 10 years," Licato said at the time. "You have to take that with a grain of salt because AI experts have been making this prediction since the 1950s at least, but I'm pretty convinced that 10 years is a generous timeframe."
Still, AGI is not here yet. And Large Language Models like ChatGPT are not indicative of the fact that AGI is on the horizon.
"AI doomerism is also AI hype," AI ethics researcher Dr. Emily Bender said in November. "The idea that synthetic text-extruding machines are harbingers of AGI that is on the verge of combusting into consciousness and then turning on humanity is unscientific nonsense."
Nvidia reported strong third-quarter earnings last week.
Shares of Nvidia rose slightly following Huang's appearance.
Contact Ian with tips via email, ian.krietzberg@thearenagroup.net, or Signal 732-804-1223.
Related: Elon Musk, top investors impressed by Nvidia’s latest report despite harsh stock slide
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