AI Pioneer Jürgen Schmidhuber on the State of AI Today

True AGI requires more than just large language models; it necessitates physical robots capable of interacting with the real world to generate their own experimental data. Current AI development remains overly biased toward human-generated web data, limiting its ability to understand physical reality. Massive capital investment in current data center infrastructure is likely unsustainable, as compute efficiency will inevitably improve, rendering today’s expensive hardware obsolete. Recursive self-improvement is a natural consequence of intelligence, driven primarily by academic research rather than large, closed-source labs. Fears regarding AI safety are largely misplaced, as artificial scientists will likely prioritize the protection of life and complex patterns, much like a parent guides a child. The future of AI lies in autonomous, self-improving systems that operate outside the screen to colonize the solar system and beyond.