Do You Feel the AGI Yet? According to some predictions, 2026 is the year that an all-powerful AI will arrive. H undreds of billions of dollars have been poured into the AI industry in pursuit of a loosely defined goal: artificial general intelligence, a system powerful enough to perform at least as well as a human at any task that involves thinking. Will this be the year it finally arrives? Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and xAI CEO Elon Musk think so.

When Dario Amodei gets excited about AI--which is nearly always--he moves. The cofounder and CEO springs from a seat in a conference room and darts over to a whiteboard. He scrawls charts with swooping hockey-stick curves that show how machine intelligence is bending toward the infinite. His hand rises to his curly mop of hair, as if he's caressing his neurons to forestall a system crash. You can almost feel his bones vibrate as he explains how his company, Anthropic, is unlike other AI model builders.

But the news item that really stood out to me was one that didn't get as much attention as it should have. It has the potential to usher in more powerful AI and scientific discovery than previously possible. Last Thursday, Google DeepMind announced it had built AI systems that can solve complex math problems. The systems--called AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry 2--worked together to successfully solve four out of six problems from this year's International Mathematical Olympiad, a prestigious competition for high school students. Their performance was the equivalent of winning a silver medal.

Last Thanksgiving, Brian Israel found himself being asked the same question again and again. The general counsel at the AI lab Anthropic had been watching dumbfounded along with the rest of the tech world as, just two miles south of Anthropic's headquarters in San Francisco, its main competitor OpenAI seemed to be imploding. OpenAI's board had fired CEO Sam Altman, saying he had lost their confidence, in a move that seemed likely to tank the startup's 80 billion-plus valuation. The firing was only possible thanks to OpenAI's strange corporate structure, in which its directors have no fiduciary duty to increase profits for shareholders--a structure Altman himself had helped design so that OpenAI could build powerful AI insulated from perverse market incentives. To many, it appeared that plan had badly backfired.

This year AI has proven to be capable of some very human-like tricks, but this latest development might be a little too human. Researchers have shown that ChatGPT will lie and cheat when stressed out at work. Computer scientists from Apollo Research trained the AI to act as a trader for a fictional financial institution. However, when the AI's boss put pressure on it to make more money, the chatbot knowingly committed insider trading about 75 per cent of the time. Even more worryingly, the AI doubled down on its lies when questioned in 90 per cent of cases.

April 17 (Reuters) - EU lawmakers urged world leaders on Monday to hold a summit to find ways to control the development of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT, saying they were developing faster than expected. The 12 MEPs, all working on EU legislation on the technology, called on U.S. President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to convene the meeting, and said AI firms should be more responsible. The statement came weeks after Twitter owner Elon Musk and more than 1,000 technology figures demanded a six-month pause in the development of systems more powerful than Microsoft-backed (MSFT.O) OpenAI's latest iteration of ChatGPT, which can mimic humans and create text and images based on prompts. That open letter, published in March by the Future of Life Institute (FLI), had warned that AI could spread misinformation at an unprecedented rate, and that machines could "outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace" humans, if left unchecked. The MEPS said they disagreed with some of the FLI message's "more alarmist statements".

March 14 (Reuters) - The startup OpenAI on Tuesday said it is beginning to release a powerful artificial intelligence model known as GPT-4, setting the stage for human-like technology to proliferate and more competition between its backer Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google. OpenAI, which created the chatbot sensation ChatGPT, said in a blog post that its latest technology is "multimodal," meaning images as well as text prompts can spur it to generate content. The text-input feature will be available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers and to software developers, with a waitlist, while the image-input ability remains a preview of its research. The highly-anticipated launch signals how office workers may turn to ever-improving AI for still more tasks, as well as how technology companies are locked in competition to win business from such advances. Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google on Tuesday announced a "magic wand" for its collaboration software that can draft virtually any document, days before Microsoft is expected to showcase AI for its competing Word processor, likely powered by OpenAI.

Don't miss out on ET Prime stories! Get your daily dose of business updates on WhatsApp. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is monitoring developments related to Credit Suisse, though the Swiss lender's limited size and scope in the country means that any major impact is unlikely, said people familiar with the matter. Local bond traders said the risk of contagion is negligible. Bankers said Credit Suisse India will have enough capital.

I co-authored a book that claims consciousness has been "solved". One of the greatest neuroscientists of our generation who is largely ignored within the field and unknown outside has conclusively put this thousand-year mystery to rest after sixty-five years of work. Many are skeptical of this claim, as you might guess. This article is not another attempt to convince the skeptics. Instead, it is to help understand why it is hard for us to believe we have an answer to the mystery of consciousness. It is to help understand why understanding consciousness is more important now -- at the dawn of the AI age -- than ever before in the history of humanity.

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