Tech execs say a type of AI that can outdo humans is coming, but have no idea what it looks like

Executives at some of the world's leading artificial intelligence labs are expecting a form of AI on a par with — or even exceeding — human intelligence to arrive sometime in the near future. But what it will eventually look like and how it will be applied remain a mystery.

Leaders from the likes of OpenAI, Cohere, Google's DeepMind, and major tech companies like Microsoft and Salesforce weighed the risks and opportunities presented by AGI, or artificial general intelligence, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week.

AGI refers to a form of AI that can complete a task to the same level as any human or, even beat humans at solving any task, whether it's chess, complex math puzzles, or scientific discoveries. It's often been referred to as the "holy grail" of AI due to how powerful such a conceived intelligent agent would be.

AI has become the talk of the business world over the past year or so, thanks in no small part to the success of ChatGPT, OpenAI's popular generative AI chatbot. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are powered large language models, algorithms trained on vast quantities of data.

That has stoked concern among governments, corporations and advocacy groups worldwide, owing to an onslaught of risks around the lack of transparency and explainability of AI systems; job losses resulting from increased automation; social manipulation through computer algorithms; surveillance; and data privacy.

OpenAI's CEO and co-founder Sam Altman said he believes artificial general intelligence might not be far from becoming a reality and could be developed in the "reasonably close-ish future."

However, he noted that fears that it will dramatically reshape and disrupt the world are overblown.

"It will change the