This is from the "just because we can doesn't mean we should" file. From one engineer's POV and for all it's worth, I find this horrific. We take these steps into the technological abyss without once ever asking ourselves if we are prepared to govern an environment where such technology exists. Elon Musk and other have called for a much greater governance structure for AI before these steps get taken but Google is pushing ahead without them.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...elligence.html

DeepMind, a British company owned by Google, may be on the verge of achieving human-level artificial intelligence (AI).

Nando de Freitas, a research scientist at DeepMind and machine learning professor at Oxford University, has said 'the game is over' in regards to solving the hardest challenges in the race to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI).


AGI refers to a machine or program that has the ability to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can, and do so without training.


According to De Freitas, the quest for scientists is now scaling up AI programs, such as with more data and computing power, to create an AGI.


Earlier this week, DeepMind unveiled a new AI 'agent' called Gato that can complete 604 different tasks 'across a wide range of environments'.


Gato uses a single neural network – a computing system with interconnected nodes that works like nerve cells in the human brain.


It can chat, caption images, stack blocks with a real robot arm and even play the 1980s home video game console Atari, DeepMind claims...