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Artificial intelligence is already superior to humans in many tasks, according to the so-called \u201cgodparents\u201d of the revolutionary technology, fuelling an industry debate as to how quickly tech giants will create \u201csuperintelligence\u201d. <\/p>\n
Nvidia chief Jensen Huang, Meta AI chief Yann LeCun, as well as top computer scientists Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li and Bill Dally were announced as among the winners of this year\u2019s Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering this week.<\/p>\n
Speaking together at the FT\u2019s Future of AI summit<\/a> in London to accept their award on Wednesday, the illustrious group suggested that machines already have \u201cequivalent intelligence\u201d to humans in some domains.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cFor the first time, AI is intelligence that augments people, it addresses labour, it does work,\u201d said Huang. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have enough general intelligence to translate the technology into an enormous amount of society-useful applications in the coming years; we are doing it today,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Reaching \u201cartificial general intelligence\u201d \u2014 where systems reach levels of capability similar to those of humans \u2014 has become one of the most pressing questions in the booming AI sector. <\/p>\n OpenAI and Anthropic have attracted billions from investors in their quest to build the technology, while the US and China are racing to reach the goal first.<\/p>\n The recent rise in valuations of both public and private AI companies is partly predicated on the belief that they are on the verge of creating world-changing technology.<\/p>\n AGI was also mentioned<\/a> 53 per cent more times in companies\u2019 earnings calls in the first quarter of 2025 than in the same period in the previous year, as businesses prepare for its potential impact.<\/p>\n The most bullish researchers and investors estimate AGI will be achieved within two years, while others suggest the milestone is decades away. <\/p>\n But the leading experts who laid the foundation for modern AI research argue that AGI will not be a single moment. \u201cIt is not going to be an event because the capabilities are going to expand progressively in various domains,\u201d said Meta\u2019s LeCun.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are already there\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. and it doesn\u2019t matter because at this point it\u2019s a bit of an academic question,\u201d Huang said, adding that the technology will continue to be applied.<\/p>\n However, they had diverging views on whether AI systems will surpass humans in all domains.<\/p>\n \u201cParts of machines will supersede human intelligence\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009Part of it is already here. How many of us can already recognise 22,000 objects in the world\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009how many humans can translate 100 languages?\u201d said Fei Fei Li<\/a>, founder of World Labs, a start-up that is creating \u201cspatial intelligence\u201d in AI by developing humanlike processing of visual data. <\/p>\n \u201cMachine-based intelligence will do a lot of powerful things, but there is a profound place for human intelligence to always be critical in our human society,\u201d Li said. <\/p>\n