How close are we to developing true artificial general intelligence like in the movies?

True AGI as the Real-World AI Technology is under development now, completing its rather long conceptual history passing 10 cycles, eras, periods or waves:

The Era of Ancient AI: since antiquity, in the form of myths, stories and rumors of artificial superbeings, gods, titans, angels, demons, mythical creatures, and synthetic beings endowed with intelligence or consciousness by master craftsmen.

The Era of Sci-Fi AI: Robots, Humanoids, Aliens, etc., in literature and cinema, from the Frankenstein novel to Terminator, the Matrix, the Ex Machina movies.

The third wave: AI in program code, from 1950s to 1970s, when the term “thinking machines” and “artificial intelligence” was introduced by Alan Turing and John McCarthy in 1955. The Darthmouth workshop proposed to proceed the study “of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves “.

Later in 1950s McCarthy introduced Lisp language (LISt Processor), which became the first tool to develop “real” AI applications.

The fourth wave: Expert Systems, from 1970s to 1980s. Expert system is a computer application that has “built-in” intelligence – knowledge in the form of a rule base. By definition, expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert. Instead of programming language the end-user is defining his problems to the system by using the structures of the problem specific user interface.

Hypertext (Hypermedia) and WWW and Semantic Web are technologies closely related to AI, computing and information / knowledge management in the form of linked content structures; in a way this represents built-in structural intelligence in documents and document structures.

The fifth wave : AI in Architectures, from 1980s to 1990s. Knowledge engineering and AI systems are based on implementing reasoning and inference processing, instead of algorithmic data processing, directly to the computer architecture to get processing in such tasks more effective to allow effective application-specific computing. The most famous activity in this area was the Japanese nationwide project called “New (Fifth) Generation Computer System” (FGCS) coordinated by the Institute for New Generation Computer Technology (ICOT).

The sixth wave: Learning-based Narrow and Weak AI, from 2000s and continuing. Intelligent systems are based on system’s ability to adapt (change the behavior, react in feedback) and to learn about the situation, in which it is used. Learning might be first taught and then self-learning during the use of the system.

The current wave of AI is based on the effective use of learning algorithms: Neural Networks, Self-Organizing Maps, Deep Learning. Neural network builds a model that resembles the structure processing of a human brain. It uses “what-if” based rules and it is taught (supervised learning) by examples. The learning algorithms are based on the use of nonlinear statistics. Currently we see a growing number of new AI applications based on use of natural, human language in various industries including banking, recruitment, health-care, agriculture, transit, etc. Advances of AI in creating human-like communication and replicating natural language patterns used by humans are based on large language corpora, a collection of human-produced texts in various encodings, first of all written text, but also, spoken, signed, etc. Large corpora with billions of words are used to create text models, i.e. algorithms, which can parse input text and 'understand' it, i.e. answer some simple questions concerning the input.

The seventh wave: Deep Learning and NLP-based Generative AI, multimodal producing various types of content, including code, text, imagery, audio, video and synthetic data.

The eighth wave of human-like AI: Learning-based General AI, AGI, by means of Generative AI and Large Language Foundation Models, as a human-like, human-level Strong AI

The ninth wave of AI: superintelligence, as a human-like superhuman AI via the superintelligence alignment

The Era of Real-World AI and Hyperintelligent Hyperautomation, from 2020 and continuing: The Real AI has the causative power to acquire, learn and apply knowledge to manipulate a broad range of environments. The World model learning and inference are taught or encoded manifesting a deep and broad understanding of reality and self-learning and self-knowing during the use of the system.

It is plain and clear that the human-mimicking AI will never cover Human Intelligence for its biological complexity of evolution, while completing it as more powerful technological intelligence working on its own principles and rules.

Automating Learning and Intelligence in term of the anthropomorphic paradigm that Computers like Humans is the reason of all the booming and busting waves, eras or periods or cycles.

In reality, intelligent systems are based on system’s ability to interact with the world, simulating and modeling, learning and self-knowing, inferencing and communicating, adjusting and adapting to its environments (change the behavior or the settings, react in feedback, etc.) and to learn about the situation, in which it is acting.

Then any human-mimicking AI, as Expert systems, AI programming, AI architectures, ML statistic algorithms, ANNs, self-driving transportation, robots, large language models (LLMs), voice assistants, GPTs, or Artificial General Intelligence, is Non-Real AI but the hardware/ software/ data/ algorithmic automation.

To be real intelligent, the World Model Engine is requested. It is semantically and ontologically aligned with World's Data/Information/Knowledge, Algorithms, Programs and Supercomputing forms the foundation of the hyperintelligent technology.

Or, there is no real AI hardware and software, technology and techniques, models and applications, systems and platform without the Integrated World Model Intelligence Engine.

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