By Blessy Reji
Back in September 2024, before 鈥榮uperintelligence鈥 became a buzzword, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had said that humans would soon be able to do things that would have seemed like 鈥渕agic to our grandparents鈥.The 鈥渕agic鈥 he was referring to would be possible because of something called superintelligence, which he said might emerge in a 鈥渇ew thousand days鈥.So what is superintelligence?Artificial superintelligence or ASI is an AI system whose cognitive performance exceeds that of the human mind across all domains of interest, whether scientific creativity, general wisdom or social skills.A blog by IBM defines ASI thus: 鈥淚n essence, an ASI would be an inexhaustible, hyper-intelligent super-being. A nearly perfect supercomputer available 24/7, with the ability to process and analyse any amount of data with speed and precision that we can鈥檛 yet comprehend.鈥滻n October 2024, SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son predicted that ASI will exist by 2035 and that it will be 10,000 times smarter than a human brain. Last week, Son even said that the company aims to become the biggest platform provider for ASI within the next 10 years.But here鈥檚 the problem. We haven’t even achieved AGI.What is AGI? 鈥淎rtificial general intelligence refers to the hypothetical intelligence of a machine that possesses the ability to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can,鈥 as per a blog by Google Cloud.To put it simply, it is AI that functions on par with the human brain. So, creating AGI is essentially the next step towards achieving superintelligence. At a New York Times DealBook Summit last year, Altman had speculated that AGI could potentially emerge this year. He reaffirmed the same in a blog, saying 鈥渨e may see the first AI agents ‘join the workforce’ and materially change the output of companies.鈥滳ompanies in pursuit of superintelligenceThough superintelligence may seem far away, several companies are focused on developing it, driven by the hope of a breakthrough that could take technology to a whole new level.OpenAI: 鈥淥penAI is a lot of things now,鈥 said Altman in a blog about superintelligence. 鈥淏ut before anything else, we are a superintelligence research company.鈥 Meta: The Mark Zuckerberg-led company recently announced a major restructuring of its artificial intelligence group, including a commitment to developing superintelligence.He told his employees that Meta鈥檚 AI efforts will fall under a new group called Meta Superintelligence Labs, which will be led by Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of data-labelling startup Scale AI.Safe Superintelligence: The name pretty much gives away what the company stands for. 鈥淏uilding safe superintelligence (SSI) is the most important technical problem of our time,鈥 the company said on its website.鈥淪SI is our mission, our name, and our entire product roadmap, because it is our sole focus. Our team, investors, and business model are all aligned to achieve SSI,鈥 the company said.Reflection AI: This startup, founded by former Google DeepMind researchers, is working on an autonomous programming tool. They believe the same core technology could eventually be used to develop superintelligence, according to tech news site Silicon Angle.Deepinvent: This is a Silicon Valley startup developing a lightweight, scalable approach to superintelligence.