An AI system has reached human level on a test for ‘general intelligence’. Here’s what that means

OLaLa Merkel / Shutterstock Michael Timothy Bennett, Australian National University and Elija Perrier, Stanford UniversityA new artificial intelligence (AI) model has just achieved human-level results on a test designed to measure “general intelligence”. On December 20, OpenAI’s o3 system scored 85% on the ARC-AGI benchmark, well above the previous AI best score of 55% and on par with the average human score. It also scored well on a very difficult mathematics test. Creating artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is the stated goal of all the major AI research labs. At first glance, OpenAI appears to have at least made a significant step towards this goal. While scepticism remains, many AI researchers and developers feel something just changed. For many, the prospect of AGI now seems more real, urgent and closer than anticipated. Are they right? Generalisation and intelligence To understand what the o3 result means, you need to understand what the ARC-AGI test is all about. In technical terms, it’s a test of an AI system’s “sample efficiency” in adapting to something new – how many examples of a novel situation the system needs to see to figure out how it works. An AI system like ChatGPT (GPT-4) is not very sample efficient. It was “trained” on millions of examples of human text, constructing probabilistic “rules”...

Read More........→February 19, 2025

Is the bird flu virus inching closer to humans?

New Delhi, April 29 (IANS) While there is no record to date of sustained human-to-human bird flu transmission, the recent virus mutations show it may be inching closer to humans, according to health experts on Monday.The bird flu or avian influenza A (H5N1) virus outbreak in poultry farms is not a new occurrence. It has periodically been reported all around the world, including poultry farms in parts of India.Migrating wild birds bring the virus to poultry farms. However, in recent years, this bird flu virus H5N1 has jumped to mammals.In 2023, the H5N1 virus killed a record number of birds and also spread to otters, sea lions, foxes, dolphins, and seals, among others. More recently it also affected numerous cattle farms across the US. Health officials in the US found fragments of bird virus in pasteurised milk sold in stores, including in about 20 per cent of samples in initial testing across the country."This shows that the H5N1 bird flu virus has now adapted for circulating among mammals. It is now able to easily spread from mammal to mammal, rather than having to jump each time from bird to mammal. This shows the virus has made suitable adaptations already. And bird flu virus has moved one step closer to humans," Dr Rajeev Jayadevan, co-chairman of the Indian Medical Association’s National Covid-19 Task Force, told IANS.Importantly,...

Read More........→May 15, 2024