Behind the Curtain: Future of AI will mean having a Ph.D. army in your pocket

Fans and foes of generative AI believe the biggest, most powerful AI models, including ChatGPT, will operate with the intelligence of a legit Ph.D. student as soon as next year. Why it matters: AI has gone from high schooler to college grad to mediocre Ph.D. student so fast that it's easy to miss the profound implications of having such scalable intelligence in the hands of everyone.

The big picture: Eventually, "we can each have a personal AI team, full of virtual experts in different areas, working together to create almost anything we can imagine," OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman wrote this past week in a manifesto called "The Intelligence Age."

• Altman and others believe we'll each have personal AI assistants with unlimited Ph.D.s, working 24/7, doing everything from managing medical records to booking flights to ... unleashing chaos on enemies.
• Altman's "we" means all of us — good, bad, and ugly.

AI optimists envision a future so bright and prosperous that today's words can hardly capture the splendor. This isn't about having a smarter Alexa or a better chatbot. It's about having an AI assistant with the intelligence, knowledge and creativity of an entire team of PhDs — an assistant that never sleeps, never quits, and keeps getting better.

• These models are still works in progress. On the "Hard Fork" podcast, the N.Y. Times' Kevin Roose quoted Terry Tao, a world-famous mathematician and UCLA professor, as saying OpenAI's o1 reasoning model — known as Strawberry, and released this month — is "like working with a mediocre but not completely incompetent graduate student."
• Axios managing editor Scott Rosenberg has consistently warned about the fuzzy utopianism surrounding today's AI. Many models don't perform with enough consistency or accuracy to truly turn them loose.

Zoom in: AI is often described by the education level it seems to possess. We've rapidly moved from:

• Elementary-level AI: Simple pattern recognition and narrow tasks —following directions, but not much more.
• High-school-level AI: More complex language processing, basic problem-solving, but still limited in understanding nuance or ambiguity.
• College/master's-level AI (where we are now): GPT-4 can handle complex questions, summarize research, and assist with tasks across many fields — but can't truly innovate or think deeply.
• Ph.D.-level AI (coming soon): Generates new ideas, makes strategic decisions, and applies expertise across fields. This AI could do more than assist — it could drive progress.

How it works: Very soon, your new staffer will be able to book a flight, get directions, transfer money. "Tell it 'book my vacation,' and it'll know your schedule, your preferences, your budget — and does it all for you from that one verbal request," said our friend Matt Lira, an eager AI early adopter who stress-tests the latest models.

• We asked Lindy — an app that promises to help you "build a team of AI employees" — to summarize a budget meeting on Friday. The robot nailed the nuance better than any human could, with a spot-on summary of a meandering meeting.

Our thought bubble: Try it! The best way to understand generative AI, for all its strengths and weaknesses, is to use it.

• In addition to broader tools like ChatGPT or Google Gemini, Axios reporters use Otter for meeting notes and transcripts. Axios' Ina Fried says it lets you be in two places at once: She uses it to attend and record large meetings like mass briefings or internal training sessions.
• Ina also has experimented with Adobe's Firefly for image creation, and says Kidgeni is a place to start an AI conversation with younger kids.

What's next: Imagine waking up and having your AI assistant brief you on the latest research, synthesize data, and plan your day — all while keeping tabs on opportunities in your field and scanning for personal or professional breakthroughs.

• Problem-solving: Whether you need neuroscience data or help with an engineering project, your AI taps into its "Ph.D. network" and suggests innovative solutions in real time.
• Personalized learning: Want to master quantum physics? Your AI creates a tailored course, adjusting as you learn, and providing feedback that would rival any top professor.
• Strategy: Your AI is proactive, offering insights on market trends, potential investments, and long-term goals — acting as both consultant and researcher.

Threat level: Skeptics warn of supercomputers waging war, turning on humans and ending life as we know it.

• There's more immediate risk if the Ph.D.s are unleashed too quickly or without fully understanding their high-risk capabilities. A New York Times opinion piece by Garrison Lovely details a hypothetical scenario from AI safety researcher Todor Markov, who recently left OpenAI after nearly six years: "An A.I. company promises to test its models for dangerous capabilities, then cherry-picks results to make the model look safe. A concerned employee wants to notify someone, but doesn't know who — and can't point to a specific law being broken. The new model is released, and a terrorist uses it to construct a novel bioweapon."

Reality check: AI companies are trying to figure out how to better monetize these powerful tools. So from a practical standpoint, they may not be accessible to everyone.

• Scott points out that there's a significant group of skeptics who believe true creativity will always elude AI: Creativity involves seeing around the corners of history and taking leaps out of context. AI models are trapped by their training context.
• Scientific progress often comes from mavericks who take great risks to champion alternative views. So progress will always depend on human motivation and invention — aided by AI, but not driven by AI.

The bottom line: We're racing toward a world where personal AI assistants will be so advanced that it won't matter if you went to Harvard — or never went to college. Everyone will have access to the world's smartest minds. What happens after that, though, is anyone's guess.