I want to tell you what I see coming. I've been lucky enough to be working
on AI for almost 15 years now. Back when I started, to describe it
as fringe would be an understatement. Researchers would say, “No, no,
we’re only working on machine learning.” Because working on AI
was seen as way too out there. In 2010, just the very mention
of the phrase “AGI,” artificial general intelligence, would get you some seriously strange looks and even a cold shoulder. "You're actually building AGI?"
people would say. "Isn't that something
out of science fiction?" People thought it was 50 years
away or 100 years away, if it was even possible at all. Talk of AI was, I guess,
kind of embarrassing. People generally thought we were weird. And I guess in some ways we kind of were. It wasn't long, though,
before AI started beating humans at a whole range of tasks that people previously thought
were way out of reach. Understanding images, translating languages, transcribing speech, playing Go and chess and even diagnosing diseases. People started waking up to the fact that AI was going to have
an enormous impact, and they were rightly asking
technologists like me some pretty tough questions. Is it true that AI is going
to solve the climate crisis? Will it make personalized education
available to everyone? Does it mean we'll all get
universal basic income and we won't have to work anymore? Should I be afraid? What does it mean for weapons and war? And of course, will China win? Are we in a race? Are we headed for a mass
misinformation apocalypse? All good questions. But it was actually a simpler and much more kind of fundamental
question that left me puzzled. One that actually gets to the very
heart of my work every day. One morning over breakfast, my six-year-old nephew Caspian
was playing with Pi, the AI I created
at my last company, Inflection. With a mouthful of scrambled eggs, he looked at me
plain in the face and said, "But Mustafa, what is an AI anyway?" He's such a sincere and curious
and optimistic little guy. He'd been talking to Pi about how cool
it would be if one day in the future, he could visit dinosaurs at the zoo. And how he could make infinite
amounts of chocolate at home. And why Pi couldn’t yet play I Spy. "Well," I said, "it's a clever
piece of software that's read most of the text
on the open internet, and it can talk to you
about anything you want." "Right. So like a person then?" I was stumped. Genuinely left scratching my head. All my boring stock answers
came rushing through my mind. "No, but AI is just another
general-purpose technology, like printing or steam." It will be a tool that will augment us and make us smarter and more productive. And when it gets better over time, it'll be like an all-knowing oracle that will help us solve
grand scientific challenges." You know, all of these responses
started to feel, I guess, a little bit defensive. And actually better suited
to a policy seminar than breakfast with
a no-nonsense six-year-old. "Why am I hesitating?"
I thought to myself. You know, let's be honest. My nephew was asking me a simple question that those of us in AI
just don't confront often enough. What is it that we are actually creating? What does it mean to make
something totally new, fundamentally different to any invention
that we have known before? It is clear that we are
at an inflection point in the history of humanity. On our current trajectory, we're headed towards
the emergence of something that we are all struggling to describe, and yet we cannot control
what we don't understand. And so the metaphors, the mental models, the names, these all matter if we’re to get the most out of AI
whilst limiting its potential downsides. As someone who embraces
the possibilities of this technology, but who's also always cared
deeply about its ethics, we should, I think, be able to easily describe
what it is we are building. And that includes the six-year-olds. So it's in that spirit that I offer up
today the following metaphor for helping us to try to grapple
with what this moment really is. I think AI should best be understood as something like a new digital species. Now, don't take this too literally, but I predict that we'll come to see them
as digital companions, new partners in the journeys
of all our lives. Whether you think we’re on a 10-,
20- or 30-year path here, this is, in my view, the most accurate
and most fundamentally honest way of describing what's actually coming. And above all, it enables
everybody to prepare for and shape what comes next. Now I totally get, this is a strong claim, and I'm going to explain to everyone
as best I can why I'm making it. But first, let me just try
to set the context. From the very first microscopic organisms, life on Earth stretches back
billions of years. Over that time,
life evolved and diversified. Then a few million years ago,
something began to shift. After countless cycles
of growth and adaptation, one of life’s branches began using tools,
and that branch grew into us. We went on to produce
a mesmerizing variety of tools, at first slowly and then
with astonishing speed, we went from stone axes and fire to language, writing
and eventually industrial technologies. One invention unleashed a thousand more. And in time, we became homo technologicus. Around 80 years ago, another new branch of technology began. With the invention of computers, we quickly jumped from the first
mainframes and transistors to today's smartphones
and virtual-reality headsets. Information, knowledge,
communication, computation. In this revolution, creation has exploded like never before. And now a new wave is upon us. Artificial intelligence. These waves of history
are clearly speeding up, as each one is amplified
and accelerated by the last. And if you look back, it's clear that we are in the fastest and most consequential wave ever. The journeys of humanity and technology
are now deeply intertwined. In just 18 months, over a billion people have used
large language models. We've witnessed one
landmark event after another. Just a few years ago, people said
that AI would never be creative. And yet AI now feels
like an endless river of creativity, making poetry and images and music
and video that stretch the imagination. People said it would never be empathetic. And yet today, millions of people enjoy
meaningful conversations with AIs, talking about their hopes and dreams and helping them work through difficult
emotional challenges. AIs can now drive cars, manage energy grids and even invent new molecules. Just a few years ago,
each of these was impossible. And all of this is turbocharged
by spiraling exponentials of data and computation. Last year, Inflection 2.5, our last model, used five billion times more computation than the DeepMind AI
that beat the old-school Atari games just over 10 years ago. That's nine orders of magnitude
more computation. 10x per year, every year for almost a decade. Over the same time,
the size of these models has grown from first tens of millions of parameters
to then billions of parameters, and very soon, tens
of trillions of parameters. If someone did nothing but read
24 hours a day for their entire life, they'd consume eight billion words. And of course, that's a lot of words. But today, the most advanced AIs
consume more than eight trillion words in a single month of training. And all of this is set to continue. The long arc of technological history
is now in an extraordinary new phase. So what does this mean in practice? Well, just as the internet
gave us the browser and the smartphone gave us apps, the cloud-based supercomputer
is ushering in a new era of ubiquitous AIs. Everything will soon be represented
by a conversational interface. Or, to put it another way, a personal AI. And these AIs will be
infinitely knowledgeable, and soon they'll be factually
accurate and reliable. They'll have near-perfect IQ. They’ll also have exceptional EQ. They’ll be kind, supportive, empathetic. These elements on their own
would be transformational. Just imagine if everybody had
a personalized tutor in their pocket and access to low-cost medical advice. A lawyer and a doctor, a business strategist and coach -- all in your pocket 24 hours a day. But things really start to change
when they develop what I call AQ, their “actions quotient.” This is their ability
to actually get stuff done in the digital and physical world. And before long, it won't just be
people that have AIs. Strange as it may sound,
every organization, from small business to nonprofit
to national government, each will have their own. Every town, building and object will be represented by a unique
interactive persona. And these won't just be
mechanistic assistants. They'll be companions, confidants, colleagues, friends and partners, as varied and unique as we all are. At this point, AIs will convincingly
imitate humans at most tasks. And we'll feel this
at the most intimate of scales. An AI organizing a community get-together
for an elderly neighbor. A sympathetic expert helping you
make sense of a difficult diagnosis. But we'll also feel it
at the largest scales. Accelerating scientific discovery, autonomous cars on the roads, drones in the skies. They'll both order the takeout
and run the power station. They’ll interact with us
and, of course, with each other. They'll speak every language, take in every pattern of sensor data, sights, sounds, streams and streams of information, far surpassing what any one of us
could consume in a thousand lifetimes. So what is this? What are these AIs? If we are to prioritize
safety above all else, to ensure that this new wave always
serves and amplifies humanity, then we need to find the right metaphors
for what this might become. For years, we in the AI community,
and I specifically, have had a tendency
to refer to this as just tools. But that doesn't really capture
what's actually happening here. AIs are clearly more dynamic, more ambiguous, more integrated and more emergent than mere tools, which are entirely
subject to human control. So to contain this wave, to put human agency at its center and to mitigate the inevitable
unintended consequences that are likely to arise, we should start to think about them
as we might a new kind of digital species. Now it's just an analogy, it's not a literal description,
and it's not perfect. For a start, they clearly aren't
biological in any traditional sense, but just pause for a moment and really think
about what they already do. They communicate in our languages. They see what we see. They consume unimaginably
large amounts of information. They have memory. They have personality. They have creativity. They can even reason to some extent
and formulate rudimentary plans. They can act autonomously
if we allow them. And they do all this
at levels of sophistication that is far beyond anything
that we've ever known from a mere tool. And so saying AI is mainly
about the math or the code is like saying we humans
are mainly about carbon and water. It's true, but it completely
misses the point. And yes, I get it, this is
a super arresting thought but I honestly think this frame helps
sharpen our focus on the critical issues. What are the risks? What are the boundaries
that we need to impose? What kind of AI do we want
to build or allow to be built? This is a story that's still unfolding. Nothing should be accepted as a given. We all must choose what we create. What AIs we bring into the world, or not. These are the questions
for all of us here today, and all of us alive at this moment. For me, the benefits of this technology
are stunningly obvious, and they inspire my life's work
every single day. But quite frankly,
they'll speak for themselves. Over the years, I've never shied
away from highlighting risks and talking about downsides. Thinking in this way helps us focus
on the huge challenges that lie ahead for all of us. But let's be clear. There is no path to progress where we leave technology behind. The prize for all
of civilization is immense. We need solutions in health care
and education, to our climate crisis. And if AI delivers just
a fraction of its potential, the next decade is going to be
the most productive in human history. Here's another way to think about it. In the past, unlocking economic growth
often came with huge downsides. The economy expanded as people
discovered new continents and opened up new frontiers. But they colonized populations
at the same time. We built factories, but they were grim
and dangerous places to work. We struck oil, but we polluted the planet. Now because we are still
designing and building AI, we have the potential
and opportunity to do it better, radically better. And today, we're not
discovering a new continent and plundering its resources. We're building one from scratch. Sometimes people say that data or chips
are the 21st century’s new oil, but that's totally the wrong image. AI is to the mind what nuclear fusion is to energy. Limitless, abundant, world-changing. And AI really is different, and that means we have to think
about it creatively and honestly. We have to push our analogies
and our metaphors to the very limits to be able to grapple with what's coming. Because this is not just
another invention. AI is itself an infinite inventor. And yes, this is exciting
and promising and concerning and intriguing all at once. To be quite honest, it's pretty surreal. But step back, see it on the long view of glacial time, and these really are the very most
appropriate metaphors that we have today. Since the beginning of life on Earth, we've been evolving, changing and then creating everything
around us in our human world today. And AI isn't something
outside of this story. In fact, it's the very opposite. It's the whole of everything
that we have created, distilled down into something
that we can all interact with and benefit from. It's a reflection of humanity across time, and in this sense, it isn't a new species at all. This is where the metaphors end. Here's what I'll tell Caspian
next time he asks. AI isn't separate. AI isn't even in some senses, new. AI is us. It's all of us. And this is perhaps the most promising
and vital thing of all that even a six-year-old
can get a sense for. As we build out AI, we can and must reflect all that is good, all that we love, all that is special about humanity: our empathy, our kindness, our curiosity and our creativity. This, I would argue, is the greatest
challenge of the 21st century, but also the most wonderful, inspiring and hopeful
opportunity for all of us. Thank you. (Applause) Chris Anderson: Thank you Mustafa. It's an amazing vision
and a super powerful metaphor. You're in an amazing position right now. I mean, you were connected at the hip to the amazing work happening at OpenAI. You’re going to have resources
made available, there are reports of these giant
new data centers, 100 billion dollars
invested and so forth. And a new species can emerge from it. I mean, in your book, you did, as well as painting
an incredible optimistic vision, you were super eloquent
on the dangers of AI. And I'm just curious,
from the view that you have now, what is it that most
keeps you up at night? Mustafa Suleyman: I think the great risk
is that we get stuck in what I call the
pessimism aversion trap. You know, we have to have
the courage to confront the potential of dark scenarios in order to get the most out of all
the benefits that we see. So the good news is that if you look
at the last two or three years, there have been very,
very few downsides, right? It’s very hard to say explicitly
what harm an LLM has caused. But that doesn’t mean that that’s what
the trajectory is going to be over the next 10 years. So I think if you pay attention
to a few specific capabilities, take for example, autonomy. Autonomy is very obviously a threshold over which we increase
risk in our society. And it's something that we should
step towards very, very closely. The other would be something like
recursive self-improvement. If you allow the model
to independently self-improve, update its own code, explore an environment
without oversight, and, you know, without a human in control
to change how it operates, that would obviously be more dangerous. But I think that we're still
some way away from that. I think it's still a good five to 10 years
before we have to really confront that. But it's time to start
talking about it now. CA: A digital species,
unlike any biological species, can replicate not in nine months, but in nine nanoseconds, and produce an indefinite
number of copies of itself, all of which have more power
than we have in many ways. I mean, the possibility for unintended
consequences seems pretty immense. And isn't it true
that if a problem happens, it could happen in an hour? MS: No. That is really not true. I think there's no evidence
to suggest that. And I think that, you know, that’s often referred to
as the “intelligence explosion.” And I think it is a theoretical,
hypothetical maybe that we're all kind of curious to explore, but there's no evidence that we're
anywhere near anything like that. And I think it's very important
that we choose our words super carefully. Because you're right, that's one
of the weaknesses of the species framing, that we will design the capability
for self-replication into it if people choose to do that. And I would actually argue
that we should not, that would be one
of the dangerous capabilities that we should step back from, right? So there's no chance
that this will "emerge" accidentally. I really think that's
a very low probability. It will happen if engineers deliberately
design those capabilities in. And if they don't take enough efforts
to deliberately design them out. And so this is the point of being explicit and transparent about trying to introduce
safety by design very early on. CA: Thank you, your vision
of humanity injecting into this new thing the best parts of ourselves, avoiding all those weird,
biological, freaky, horrible tendencies that we can
have in certain circumstances, I mean, that is a very inspiring vision. And thank you so much for coming here
and sharing it at TED. Thank you, good luck. (Applause)
