Machines that think like humans: Everything to know about AGI and AI Debate 3

After a year's hiatus, the AI Debate hosted by Gary Marcus and Vincent Boucher returned with a gaggle of AI thinkers, this time including policy types and scholars outside of the discipline of AI such as Noam Chomsky. After a one-year hiatus, the annual artificial intelligence debate organized by Montreal.ai Learn about the leading tech trends the world will lean into over the next 12 months and how they will affect your life and your job. The debate this year, AI Debate 3: The AGI Debate, as it's called, focused on the concept of artificial general intelligence, the notion of a machine capable of integrating a myriad of reasoning abilities approaching human levels. While the previous debate featured a number of AI scholars, Friday's meet-up drew participation by 16 participants from a much wider gamut of professional backgrounds. In addition to numerous computer scientists and AI luminaries, the program included legendary linguist and activist Noam Chomsky, computational neuroscientist Konrad Kording, and Canadian parliament member Michelle Rempel Garner. Also: AI's true goal may no longer be intelligence Marcus was once again joined by his co-host, Vincent Boucher of Montreal.ai. The debate ran longer than planned. The full 3.5 hours can be viewed on the YouTube page for the debate. The debate Web site is agidebate dot com. In addition, you may want to follow the hashtag #agidebate. NYU professor emeritus and AI gadfly Gary Marcus resumed his duties hosting the multi-scholar face-off. Marcus started things off with a slide show of a "very brief history of AI," tongue firmly in cheek. Marcus said that contrary to enthusiasm in the decade following the landmark ImageNet success, the "promise" of machines doing various things had not paid off. He featured reference to his own New Yorker article throwing cold water on the matter.