How to make AI capable of general intelligence and what such technology would mean for
society. Artificial intelligence surrounds us. More and more of the systems and services you
interact with every day are based on AI technology. Although some very recent AI systems are
generalists to a degree most AI is narrowly specific that is it can only do a single thing
in a single context. For example your spellchecker can’t do mathematics and the world's best
chess-playing program can’t play Tetris. Human intelligence is different. We can solve a
variety of tasks including those we have not seen before. In Artificial General Intelligence
Julian Togelius explores technical approaches to developing more general artificial
intelligence and asks what general AI would mean for human civilization. Togelius starts by
giving examples of narrow AI that have superhuman performance in some way. Interestingly there
have been AI systems that are superhuman in some sense for more than half a century. He then
discusses what it would mean to have general intelligence by looking at definitions from
psychology ethology and computer science. Next he explores the two main families of
technical approaches to developing more general artificial intelligence: foundation models
through self-supervised learning and open-ended learning in virtual environments. The final
chapters of the book investigate potential artificial general intelligence beyond the strictly
technical aspects. The questions discussed here investigate whether such general AI would be
conscious whether it would pose a risk to humanity and how it might alter society.
