AI has defied past skepticism by displaying remarkable creativity in generating poetry, images, music, and videos alongside meaningful conversations that assist individuals with emotional challenges. The exponential growth in data and computation power has enabled AI to achieve feats previously deemed impossible, such as driving cars, managing energy grids, and inventing new molecules. The advancement in AI models is staggering, with computations reaching 5 billion times more than older models, and model parameters expanding from millions to trillions. The pace of development is rapid, with AI now consuming trillions of words monthly in training, signifying the continual evolution of AI technology into a new era of unprecedented possibilities.
When it comes to artificial intelligence, what are we actually creating? Even those closest to its development are struggling to describe exactly where things are headed, says Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, one of the primary architects of the AI models many of us use today. He offers an honest and compelling new vision for the future of AI, proposing an unignorable metaphor — a new digital species — to focus attention on this extraordinary moment. (Followed by a Q&A with head of TED Chris Anderson)