Book: Kaku, Michio. Physics of the Future. Doubleday, 2011.
Chapter: “2. Future of AI”
Summary: Kaku starts the chapter with context. The current state AI is not impressive; they’re dumber than cockroaches. In Near Future section, he thinks we’ll have plenty of helpful robots around. In Midcentury, he expects robots to be ubiquitous, modular, emotional, and much more useful. In Far Future, he speculates we’ll have, toward the very end, AGI, artificial general intelligence, or AI that is generally smarter than humans. He also believes they’ll be conscious.
Thoughts: It’s important to note the book was published in 2011. Things are much more impressive now, I think, re: AI, especially re: GenAI, and LLMs, in particular. Kaku’s prediction’s contrast with the more techno-optimistic prediction of 2029 by futurist Ray Kurzweil. Personally, I thought the latter prediction was unrealistic the first time I read it (maybe a decade earlier). But I would not have anticipated AI to seem so human-like (via LLMs) by now … Kaku writes, “In the future, however, robots will become so sophisticated that they will almost appear to be humanlike, operating seamlessly with nuance and sophistication” (77).