According to Robin Li, the co-founder and CEO of Baidu, the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) is expected to take at least another 10 years, despite concerns surrounding the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI). AGI refers to hypothetical AI systems that will surpass human cognitive abilities in the future, leading to widespread concerns about its potential risks to humanity.
During a panel discussion at Viva Tech Paris 2024, Li made this prediction. This comes shortly after Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, announced that OpenAI’s GPT-4 generative AI model had successfully passed the Turing test, which is a benchmark used to determine how human-like a conversational model is.
Baidu, one of China’s leading developers of large language models (LLM), boasts around 200 million cumulative AI users. Li emphasized the importance of using AI technology to address pressing human concerns, as this will ultimately pave the way for AGI. While there is a debate about the efficiency of open and closed AI development, Li believes that solving societal issues should be the main focus, which could eventually alleviate concerns about the current population decline.
Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur, has been vocal about his concerns regarding population decline. In a post from August 2022, Musk highlighted that the global population’s yearly growth rate had dropped to 0.91% in 2024, compared to 1.28% twenty years ago in 2004, according to Worldometer data.
Overall, Li’s statement suggests that AGI is still a decade away, but focusing on solving pressing human concerns through AI development could pave the way for its eventual realization.