Command Palette
Search for a command to run...
From AGI to ASI
From AGI to ASI
Abstract
Over the last decade, building human-level artificial general intelligence has moved from far-fetched speculation to being a concrete next-decade target for many of the largest AI organisations. Achieving this goal would have profound and far-reaching impacts on human society, which raises many complex questions for the decade ahead. This report investigates how AI itself might continue to develop in a post-AGI world along the continuum of machine intelligence. The endpoint of this continuum, Universal AI, is theoretically well understood, which provides some formal grounding for the main focus of this report: the transition from human-level AGI to artificial general superintelligence, which, intuitively, can be understood as a system that is more intelligent and cognitively capable than large organisations of humans. After characterizing ASI, the report discusses four potential pathways from AGI to ASI: scaling AGI, AI paradigm shifts, recursive improvement, and ASI emerging from large-scale multi-agent collectives. The report then discusses possible frictions and bottlenecks along these pathways. Determining whether the impact of these frictions will be negligible or substantial raises a number of concrete open research questions. Due to large uncertainties for predicting ASI progress, it cannot be ruled out that AI progress might continue to accelerate over the next years. This could imply that the image of a single transformative step change, caused by the introduction of human-level AGI into our society, could be inaccurate. More apt might be the prospect of a series of transformative societal changes caused by AI-enabled progress and breakthroughs across many areas of science and technology. Preparing for this prospect requires a massively interdisciplinary endeavour of global scope and interest.
One-sentence Summary
This report investigates the transition from human-level artificial general intelligence to artificial general superintelligence by analyzing four potential pathways including scaling AGI, AI paradigm shifts, recursive improvement, and ASI emerging from large-scale multi-agent collectives, arguing that AI progress may involve a series of transformative societal changes rather than a single transformative step change, a prospect that necessitates a massively interdisciplinary endeavour of global scope to prepare for profound impacts.
Key Contributions
- The report characterizes the transition from human-level AGI to artificial superintelligence by defining Universal AI as the endpoint of a machine intelligence continuum. This framework provides formal grounding for analyzing development trajectories where systems exceed the cognitive capabilities of large human organizations.
- Four potential pathways to ASI are identified, including scaling AGI, AI paradigm shifts, recursive improvement, and multi-agent collectives, alongside specific frictions for each trajectory. Analysis details how economic limits, diminishing returns, and orchestration efforts may impede progress along these trajectories.
- Concrete research agendas are proposed to prepare for superintelligent systems, such as developing multi-agent scaling laws and monitoring mechanisms for AI-enabled research acceleration. These recommendations aim to advance foundational understanding of AI limits and track the degree of human-in-the-loop involvement in automated development processes.
Introduction
With human-level artificial general intelligence emerging as a near-term target, researchers must now investigate the trajectory toward artificial superintelligence to prepare for profound societal impacts. The authors note that existing forecasts often lack concrete technological pathways and struggle with uncertainties regarding compute scaling, algorithmic efficiency, and potential bottlenecks such as data exhaustion or economic limits. To navigate this uncertainty, the report characterizes superintelligence and outlines four potential technological pathways from AGI to ASI, including scaling, paradigm shifts, recursive improvement, and multi-agent collectives. Furthermore, the authors identify specific frictions along these routes and frame them as open research questions to guide future efforts in reducing uncertainty about AI capabilities.
Experiment
The provided text is labeled as a Glossary section and consists solely of an image reference without any accompanying text describing experimental procedures or results. Therefore, it is not possible to outline an evaluation setup or identify qualitative findings and conclusions from this material. This input lacks the necessary narrative details to describe experiment validations or overall outcomes.