Clearly Intelligent

Agency is the capacity of an entity to act within a given environment. Humans have agency – we get up, walk the dog, make coffee, and head out the door for work. We have the capability to make these decisions and plan and execute actions based on our individual needs, desires, or goals. As AI systems advance, so might their own agency.

An AI Agent or Agentic AI is a system that can perform a series of actions in pursuit of a goal. Within these systems there may be varying levels of autonomy, where the system considers different potential actions and chooses to pursue a path that it believes will result in further progress on the overall task or task completion.

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is a concept used to describe a system that has the general intelligence abilities that a human has. The specific definition of AGI varies widely across organizations and individuals. Some say “better than most humans at most tasks.” I think this is a decent approximation of AGI. It’s important to note that the domain in which an AI system operates constrains its ability to execute tasks. For example, a Large Language Model like GPT4 may be able to list out the steps necessary to make a cup of coffee in a new home it’s never encountered, but without a physically embodied form like a humanoid robot, it cannot actually execute that task.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the capability of non-human systems to perform tasks generally associated with human intelligence. AI is a broad term that covers many types of systems ranging from web search engines, to recommendation systems, to Generative AI.

Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) is a concept used to describe a system that develops intelligent capabilities beyond those of even the most intelligent humans. Like Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), the specific definition of ASI varies widely. A decent approximation is a system that can outperform humans at all cognitive tasks and is capable of generating new knowledge and discoveries.

Compute – more accurately described as “computational power” – when discussed in the AI realm is a noun, rather than a verb meaning “to complete a calculation or operation”. When used regarding AI, the term “compute” generally refers to the specialized hardware, software, and infrastructure needed to train and run AI models. The more compute one has at their disposal, the greater their capacity to use AI is.

Consciousness is an entity’s awareness of it’s own existence and it’s separability from the external world. Humans are generally accepted to be conscious – we all know that we exist as part of a larger existence in the universe, and can easily draw the boundaries that exist between the “self” and everything else. There is also general acceptance that many animals exhibit behaviors that indicate they are conscious to a degree. The exact nature of consciousness has been debated by philosophers for thousands of years, and we’re unlikely to find an answer to it here at Clearly Intelligent, but as AI systems become more advanced, it’s a topic that will warrant further consideration.

Generative AI is a blanket term for systems that receive an input (often in the form of a prompt) and generate an output. ChatGPT is a generative AI tool that debuted with text-to-text capability, but over time has added the ability to intake and generate images as well. Image generation tools include Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. Google’s Veo 3 is a tool that turns prompts into video. There are thousands of generative AI tools out there that fall into many categories.

GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) are specialized computer chips originally designed to render graphics for computers. Today, their use has evolved far beyond this initial capability and they play an integral part in training and running inference for AI models. Nvidia is one of the most world’s largest providers of GPUs, like the H100.

Intelligence is the ability of an entity to perceive, collect, or infer information and use that information to make decisions and/or execute actions. Intelligence is a wide spectrum, ranging from simple animal intelligence to complex human intelligence.

Sentience is the ability to experience feelings and sensations.

Sapience, also known as wisdom  is the ability to apply knowledge, experience, and good judgment to navigate life’s complexities. This concept differs from intelligence in that it has subjective (based on opinion/judgment) vs. objective (based on truth/facts) grounding.