I sat down with Dr. Ruchir Puri, the chief scientist of IBM Research, for a wide-ranging discussion on the state of AI today. We talk about everything from AGI and X-risk to reliability in language models, the viability of agents and the pending economic impact of the technology. 

Episode Links: 

• Artificial general intelligence: https://www.thedeepview.co/p/the-nobel-prize-and-the-mainstreaming-of-ai-s-x-risk
• Microsoft and OpenAI’s AGI definition: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-and-openais-secret-agi-definition?rc=sbfmgm
• AI agents: https://www.thedeepview.co/p/prog-predictions-series-draft-ef9c081b34af8540
• AI and job loss: https://www.thedeepview.co/p/chatgpt-s-impact-on-the-labor-market-openai-generative-ai-artificial-intelligence-job-loss-report-st
• Technological revolution: https://www.thedeepview.co/p/south-korea-stakes-a-claim-in-the-ai-race
• The Free Press article mentioned at 38:29: https://www.thefp.com/p/freddie-de-boer-is-ai-the-greatest-invention-or-overhyped

Outline: 

0:00 – Intro 
3:16 – The pace of improvement
8:56 – Unraveling ‘AGI’
14:47 – The inflection point of AI agents
21:54 – Thinking about reliability
26:14 – The economic implications of AI 
32:37 – Is AI like the Industrial Revolution? 
38:29 – How useful is AI, actually? 
43:57 – Existential risk 

Get The Deep View — your daily source for in-depth, fact-based reporting on artificial intelligence — in your inbox every morning. Subscribe here!

Connect with us on X, TikTok and Instagram.  

Artificial intelligence is a complicated topic, bound by a number of complex threads — technical science, ethics, safety, regulation, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, investment and — above all — humanity. On The Deep View: Conversations, Ian Krietzberg, host and Editor-in-Chief at The Deep View, breaks it all down, cutting through the hype to make clear what's important and why you should care.