How Life Changes When We Reach Artificial Superintelligence w/ Dr. Fei-Fei Li & Dr. Eric Schmidt | EP #206

Peter Diamandis (0:00)

What does superintelligence mean, and when is it likely to be here? Eric, we've talked about this. What are your thoughts?

Fei-Fei Li (0:07)

Superintelligence is defined as AI's ability to know from chemistry to biology to sports. It's already super to human in many ways, but the collaboration between humans and AI will be the most productive and fruitful way of doing things.

Eric Schmidt (0:30)

All of the evidence, and Fei-Fei said this very well, is going to be human and computer interaction. I think that to get to real superintelligence, we probably need another algorithmic breakthrough.

Fei-Fei Li (0:41)

It's so important as we talk about AGI and ASI, that the most important thing that we keep in mind is...

Peter Diamandis (0:52)

Now, that's the Moonshot, ladies and gentlemen. Everybody welcome to Eric Schmidt Week. Two episodes this week, both with Eric talking about some of the most important developments. The first is with me and Eric and Fei-Fei Li, who's building world models. It's a conversation we had live at FII in Saudi Arabia talking about digital superintelligence. This is rare because Fei-Fei Li doesn't travel. It was her first trip to Saudi and it was an extraordinary conversation. The second episode is between my Moonshot mate Dave Blunden and Eric Schmidt talking about US versus China and how to avoid critical breakdowns and what might be catastrophes in the future due to accelerating AI. All right, get ready for two incredible episodes. The first one, myself, Eric and Fei-Fei Li on digital superintelligence. All right, let's jump in.

We're going to be discussing superintelligence. What does that mean, and what happens when it arrives? We've been talking about AI, AGI, now perhaps digital superintelligence or ASI. I want to start with the obvious question, and it's one that I don't think anybody has a perfect answer for, but what does superintelligence mean, and when is it likely to be here? Eric, we've talked about this. What are your thoughts?

Eric Schmidt (2:24)

Thank you, Peter, and thanks for everybody for being here, and obviously thanks to Fei-Fei, our very close colleague.

The general accepted definitions of general intelligence is its human level of intelligence, AGI. And human intelligence, you can understand because we're all human. You have ideas, you have friends, you think about things, you're creative. Superintelligence is defined as the intelligence equal to the sum of everyone, right? Or even better than all humans. And there is a belief in our industry that we will get to superintelligence. We don't know exactly how long. There's a group of people who I call the San Francisco Consensus, because they're all living in San Francisco. Maybe it's the weather or the drugs or something. But they all basically think that it's within three to four years. I personally think it'll be longer than that. But fundamentally, their argument is that there are compounding effects that we're seeing now, which will race us to this much faster than people think.

Peter Diamandis (3:29)

And Fei-Fei, I don't think anybody's expected the performance that AI has given us so far. The scaling laws have given us capabilities that are extraordinary. You know, you're the CEO of a new company, the founder of World Labs. You've been at Stanford working on this. How do you think about superintelligence? Do you discuss superintelligence at all in your work?

Fei-Fei Li (3:51)

Yeah, that's a great question, Peter. And, you know, when Alan Turing dared humanity with the question of, can we create thinking machines, he was thinking about the fundamental question of intelligence. So the birth of AI is about intelligence, is about the profound general ability of what intelligence means. So from that point of view, AI is already born as a field that tries to push the boundary of what intelligence means. Now, fast forward to 75 years after Alan Turing, this phrase superintelligence is pretty hot in Silicon Valley. And I do agree with Eric that the colloquial definition is what is the capability of AI in computers that's better than any human. But I do think we need to be a little careful. First of all, some part of today's AI is already better than any human. For example, AI's ability of speaking many different languages, translating between dozens and dozens of language.

Pretty much no human can do that. Or AI's ability to calculate things really fast. AI's ability to know from chemistry to biology to sports, the vast amount of knowledge. So it's already super to human in many ways. But it remains a question that can AI ever be Newton? Can AI ever be Einstein? Can AI ever be Picasso? I actually don't know. For example, we have all the celestial data of the movement of the stars that we observe today, give that data to any AI algorithm. It will not be able to deduce Newtonian law of motion. That ability that humans have, it's the combination of creativity, abstraction.