Rethink... the promise of AI

At the start of 2023 ChatGPT took Artificial Intelligence from research labs to the mainstream. Now we can choose between the latest version of OpenAI's product, as well as Claude, Gemini, Grok and many others. Generative AIs can produce pictures and video from a text prompt, and many websites and apps are now labelled "Powered by AI".

This new technology can do lots of things, and tech companies have raised funds based on its potential.

But what is AI actually for?

There are certain specialized AIs which have a clear purpose. AlphaFold2, which can predict how amino-acid sequences fold into a protein, won its creators the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Google Translate is an AI with a purpose that’s clear from its name.

But so far there is no must-have or "killer" application for the Large Language Models and Generative AIs, which would potentially generate huge revenues for technology companies.

The future of AI is equally unclear. Will AI somehow lead to all-purpose "Artificial General Intelligence", fully-autonomous robots or even machine consciousness? Or is this the stuff of fantasy and nightmares?

Presenter: Ben Ansell
Producer: Ravi Naik
Editor: Lisa Baxter

Contributors:
Mike Wooldridge, the Ashall Professor of the Foundations of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Oxford.
Rosalind Picard, Grover M. Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab.
Ethan Mollick, Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and AI researcher.
Pip Finkemeyer, author of "One Story" and software designer and researcher.
Tracy Dennis Tiwary, Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience, Clinical Psychology and Developmental Psychology, at the City University of New York.