Renowned mathematician Terence Tao has proposed a new way to think about AI capabilities. On Mastodon, Tao questions whether true "artificial general intelligence" (AGI) is actually achievable with current AI tools. His alternative: "artificial general cleverness" (AGC).
According to Tao, "general cleverness" means the ability to solve complex problems using partly improvised methods. These solutions might be random, rely on raw computing power, or draw from training data. That makes them something other than true "intelligence," but they can still succeed at many tasks, especially when strict testing procedures filter out incorrect results, he says.
"This results in the somewhat unintuitive combination of a technology that can be very useful and impressive, while simultaneously being fundamentally unsatisfying and disappointing."
Terence Tao
In humans, cleverness and intelligence are linked, but in AI they're decoupled, Tao argues. The mathematician has recently spoken positively about how AI has sped up his own work.
