During a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing on the future of artificial intelligence (AI), experts pushed back against Elon Musk's optimistic predictions for the arrival of artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Responding to Rep. Ro Khanna's question about Musk's five-to-six-year AGI timeline, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang called AGI discussions a "distraction" from focusing on current AI applications. Other panelists, Dr. Haniyeh Mahmoudian, Global AI ethicist for DataRobot, and Klon Kitchen, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, directly challenged Musk's prediction.
Kitchen characterized the five-year timeline as "aspirational," emphasizing the ongoing development of increasingly sophisticated foundation models and generative AI. Mahmoudian concurred, acknowledging the progress in foundation models that can generalize tasks, but stating the AGI timeline is "obviously not five years."
This hearing is part of the House's exploration of AI implementation in the Pentagon. Last week, the House passed a defense bill promoting AI adoption while also mandating an examination of AI vulnerabilities posed by adversaries like China and Russia.
Rep. Marc Molinaro stressed the urgency for the Department of Defense to embrace AI, highlighting its potential as the "next platform of military interaction that can be weaponized."
