Google builds the first strong Artificial Intelligence, able to combine several tasks

Strong Artificial Intelligence, also called Generalized Artificial Intelligence (AGI), is the holy grail of AI researchers. She would be able to compete with human intelligence, or even be conscious. DeepMind, Google’s sister company, has just published an article on Gato, a new general purpose AI that could be the precursor to strong AI. The majority of current AIs are task-specific, trained with neural networks for a specific purpose like creating deepfakes or playing chess. With Gato, DeepMind takes the opposite approach and has created a single AI capable of performing many very different tasks.

According to the authors, “the same network with the same weights is able to play the Atari console, identify the content of images, chat, stack blocks with a real robotic arm and much more”. The AI ​​uses the context to decide in what form to give its answers. In total, it is able to perform 604 tasks with a single model, a real feat. DeepMind used a transformer type neural network, typically used in language processing. Gato has been trained on a large number of databases, containing images, text, as well as the experience of agents in the real world or in simulated environments.

The problem is that the AI ​​fails to perform these tasks correctly all the time. For example, answers during a discussion may be incorrect. Gato notably indicated that Marseille was the capital of France… DeepMind indicates that, for three quarters of the tasks (450 out of 604), the AI ​​would perform better than an expert half the time. We would therefore be on a success rate of just over a third.

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Futura Science