What if AI ends up being dumb?

Welcome to AI Collision 💥,

In today’s collision between AI and our world:

• Dumb AI
• Wheely good robots
• AMD cuts humans for AI

If that’s enough to get hit the ceiling, read on…

AI Collision 💥

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) by 2026 or 2027.

That’s what Dario Amodei thinks about how long we’ve got to wait until AI matches or surpasses the intelligence of humans.

He said as much (and a LOT more) in this recent Lex Fridman podcast…all five hours and 15 minutes of it. Yes, five hours…

I would say watch it all. After all, Dario is arguably the most important person in AI right now aside from maybe Jensen Huang and Sam Altman.

But five hours… c’mon guys. Might have to do this one in a few sittings.

Nonetheless, he’s saying AGI is coming (as you would expect). But it’s not that widely held an idea that AGI is as close as some might think.

Yann LeCun, who we’ve mentioned here at AI Collision before, then posted this on X.com earlier today:

Yes, that’s the same Ilya from OpenAI who’s saying that AI has hit a ceiling. Now, he’s not saying that AGI is never going to happen. But he’s definitely making a clear case that as we know it now, the advancement of AI is diminishing.

My question is, who do you believe? If you just throw more compute at these AI models, do they progress in a linear or exponential nature, or is it a law of diminishing returns?

Consider that humanity certainly does not know everything, and AGI is said to exceed our intelligence, what does that really mean, and can AI ever get there?

Or is it becoming one of Zeno’s paradoxes, that AI gets to a point, but never catches humanity because we’ve always moved to a new point?

I still suspect that AGI is an inevitable outcome and that Big Tech will use all resources available to unlock it. That’s good for the industry and the companies building the hardware needed… and if they get to AGI, for Big Tech too.

But maybe the growing number of cynics aren’t off the mark. Perhaps AI, for now at least and the foreseeable future, does have a ceiling that it can’t break and will forever be half a step away from human intelligence.

If that’s the case, then we’re in the midst of the biggest misallocation of capital the world has ever seen.

Not even the US DOGE can fix this one!

AI gone wild 🤪

AI and robotics, we all get it. It’s what will make robotics a central part of day-to-day life in the near future.

Sure, you might not be on board yet. And I’m not so convinced either (for now). But I must admit that when I was at the shops the other day getting a case of beers, three bottles of wine, two loaves of bread, two litres of milk, bananas, and a bunch of other shopping in two “bags for life” from the supermarket, I did think, “Geez, I could do with one of those robots about now.“

That thought intensified when my phone buzzed. My wife requested a coffee on my way back, which became exponentially more difficult to fulfil with the load I already had. An extra set of robotics hands with semi-infinite strength really would have been great. Coffees for everyone!

Nonetheless, as we creep closer and closer to the idea of humanoid robots in the home, and they get less and less terrifying to look at and think about… someone goes and terrifies the crap out of us with a robot that frankly is horrifying to think of in the real world.

Or conversely, it’s far too easy to picture thousands of them invading a small country… or a large country.

But that’s exactly what’s coming out of China. The Chinese are building army robots developing tech to level up the playing field, or the battlefield, with the Americans.

Sure, the US might have the Air Force and naval power to dominate anyone anywhere, but how does that play out against an army of millions of robots?

Is this the direction AI and robotics is heading? Particularly now there are to be far more unpredictable heads of state in power in the White House?

With Trump in power, and a pure focus on MAGA and domestic manufacturing, expect the AI wars, trade wars and robot wars between the US and China to fire up again. It will make for fascinating viewing, and I think plenty of opportunities in the market too.

Boomers & Busters 💰

AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).

Boom 📈

• Cyngn (NASDAQ:CYN) up 84%
• Appen (ASX:APX) up 25%
• Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) up 14%

Bust 📉

• Team Internet Group (LSE:TIG) down 38%
• Micron (NASDAQ:MU) down 10%
• Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) down 10%

From the hive mind 🧠

• On the subject of AI hitting a ceiling, this is a pretty good long-form Substack read on the subject and why AI may already be struggling to scale.
• And on the subject of US vs. China AI wars, this gives you some idea as to what’s going on in China and how they’re tackling the problems they’re facing and going to face.
• And to reinforce just how important the AI race is to Big Tech, AMD is getting rid of 4% of its workforce just to focus even more intently on its AI future.

#AD

The news that AMD is getting rid of 4% of its workforce is no big surprise to me. Capitalism’s driving force is often disruptive because new innovations replace old ones.

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Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️

This has ended up as one of the closest polls we’ve ever done. And I’m quite fascinated by where this is at.

I’ll be honest, my original thought was the “No” votes would win this overwhelmingly.

That is clearly not the case now.

I wonder what’s changed. If you’d like to share in more detail why you voted yes or (so long as they don’t rise up) answers, please let me know in the comments.

Weirdest AI image of the day

A meme that only ancient humans from 300 AD would understand – r/weirddalle

ChatGPT’s random quote of the day

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to leave comments and questions below,

Sam Volkering

Editor-in-Chief

AI Collision