There has been a lot of press around Artificial Intelligence since OpenAI and Microsoft announced ChatGPT nearly three years ago. There are a lot of questions to ask, to contemplate. Answers are far and wide. We are in the early stages of the next generation of AI. The next wave of innovation will have far greater impact on our day to day lives than anything in human history. A lot of questions are concerned about a dystopian future. A threat to human existence. The replacement of jobs. What will the human purpose be? For all the celebrations in the high tech world, the real world is less enthusiastic. The real humans that drive our economies can only be left with a feeling of loathing, with a feeling of fear. If I ever get around to posting this segment it will probably already be out of date by the time I hit publish,
I read a book by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan titled “AI 2041: 10 Visions for our Future”, which I rather liked. It tackled both the fears of AI and the opportunities before us. What I particularly liked is to get to those positive outcomes it will take real effort on the part of both Public and Private Industry. The disciplines required for AI are not new, they have been studied and nurtured for decades. At this point in time we are rapidly moving from the theories of academia to the real world implementation of AI. It is happening at a dizzying pace. In many ways Lee and Quifan’s book are already falling behind as many of the things they predict for 2041 will arrive much earlier and the focus will shift from AI to AGI to ASI.
Having grown up in tech, I get it. The tech sector is one of the most hyper competitive sectors on the planet. If you fall behind you may as well be dead. A case in point is the Microsoft Windows Phone. A classic case of a company resting on its laurels. Thinking it was poised to make the next great leap forward in technology, only to be convincingly crushed. Kudos to the Apple iPhone. At its core technology has always been a race towards the future, whichever way the tech industry chooses to define that future. The next big market opportunity is always in the hundreds of billions of dollars, in fact we now even talk about trillions. I would like to believe these high tech leaders have considered the consequences of their actions, but whatever warning they provide are purely lip service to the weak minded. They are more caught up in their cult of personality, than to have the time to think about moral outcomes.
If you think this is going to be a blog about creating fear about the end of humanity, do not fear as that has already been set in motion. Oppenheimer and Sakharov felt these fears after taking the world nuclear. In a odd and round about way we may see history repeating itself. When ChatGPT first was released on November 30, 2022 the discussion turned to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and how long before that becomes reality? A a crisp and quick definition of AGI comes from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt: AGI becomes reality when it achieves “self determination”. The first answer on when this would occur was around 20 yrs. In the 2 1/2 years since the launch that time line has come way down. In a recent talk Eric gave he quoted one San Francisco think tank as forecasting 3 years. Then added Artificial Super Intelligence in 6 yrs, that is when all human intelligence is AI and will allow AI to see and solve things humans simply do not have the capability to do. Super Intelligence passes the human mind,
I posed the question to ChatGPT “how long before we have AGI”? The answer came back that it was a theoretical question. It would likely by 2050 before we see AGI. Though the optimists say it could happen in the 2030’s. Then I watched a TED Talk with Chris Anderson and Shane Legg. Shane was a co-founder of DeepMind, one of the first AI companies. DeepMind was eventually acquired by Google. Shane believes we will have AGI by 2028. Maybe ChatGPT is trying to play me. The point here is things are advancing at an ever increasing velocity. We are talking about current tech that lives and learns 24 by 7 365 days a year. The fact that it may go faster than humans had predicted should not be that surprising.
Poking around YouTube there is a lot of great TED talks and interviews one can listen to. Some of the leading academics, tech industry experts, former CEO’s etc..provide in depth insights into the history of AI and the future of AI . I have watched Kai Fu Lee, Geoffrey Hinton, Eric Schmidt etc..talk about the imminent arrival of AGI and then soon to be followed by ASI. One of the things they talk about is can we put guardrails around this pending new era? I have to admit the suggestions they come up with I am not to enthusiastic about to downright skeptical. Hinton says we need to regulate capitalism as it works best with regulation. I agree but the path to do this is fraught with political hell. Can we program it? Programming is soon to be dead so it’s a time issue. Not to mention the real king of AI is algorithms.
It is an awesome undertaking of the mind to have to ponder the question “can humanity be replaced?” It makes us uncomfortable, but that is the question that has to be asked when you are talking about Artificial Super Intelligence. What is the definition of ASI? Well here is what Google AI provided me: Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) is a theoretical form of AI that surpasses human intelligence in all aspects, including problem-solving, creativity, and emotional understanding. It represents a hypothetical stage of AI development beyond Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), where AI not only matches but exceeds human cognitive abilities. While ASI remains largely theoretical, it is a topic of ongoing discussion and research due to its potential implications for humanity. That is a load to take in, Good news is at this stage it is purely theoretical. The theory being when achieved the human brain will be irrelevant. Will we get there? It would seem that question is irrelevant as we are already on our way. How far is it off? Is it ten years? 40 years? Longer?
Finally you have to ask as a people are we ready? Ready for massive job displacement across all sectors. Many companies are yet to fully embrace the cloud and still have a lot of hardware and software that is sitting on premise. Even some tech companies have yet to fully embraced the changes that AI is driving. At the forefront of this transition will be the big tech leaders like Microsoft, Google, NVidia, Facebook, Amazon, Apple etc.. We are already seeing this as large layoffs are taking place and expected to continue. What has always been great about these companies is the simple philosophy “we eat our own dog food”. When I was at Microsoft a product was never released before all internal employees had tried it first. A easy beta test. In the era of Cloud Services this now all happens in the background without all the media fanfare. The difference is now some of those tests will have jobs attached to them. Some, if not many jobs to be lost.
Finally it may seem as one of those things you need to be frightened of. It would not be human if you were not. As mentioned technology always increases in velocity. We are entering a world where it will go much faster than most ordinary humans can comprehend. Could you imagine a day where all paralegals are just wiped out? There are 366,000 paralegals in the US and it is projected to grow by 4000 by 2033. That could all change in an instant, so what will we do with 366,000 available paralegals? The future of AI will change society and how we as humans adapt will determine our fate. Are we ready for this change? That may already be in the past.
Good Night and Good Luck
Hans Henrik Hoffmann July 18, 2025
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