Know where AI is going
"Is AI getting smarter?" Here's how to answer questions about AI's future
You're at a press conference and a journalist asks "when will AI be as smart as humans?"
They want to know about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
Whether you're discussing AI trends, explaining AI's impact on your industry, or launching an AI tool, you need to know how to address these questions.
As communications professionals, managing expectations and developing messaging requires an understanding of strategy and goals. With AI, this means knowing not just today's capabilities, but how to discuss future possibilities.
Here's what you need to know about AI's development stages:
Narrow AI is what we have today. These systems excel at specific tasks - like identifying objects in images or answering questions. Every AI tool you're communicating about right now is narrow AI, no matter how impressive it seems.
AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) is a future frontier - AI that matches human intelligence across any task. While AI improves rapidly, we don't actually know if AGI is achievable. In communications, this means we’re less likely to say "our AI solution is getting closer to human-level intelligence," and more likely to say "we’re expanding AI capabilities in areas like customer service and inventory management."
ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) represents AI surpassing human intelligence - because why would human intelligence be the limit, right? While it makes for dramatic headlines about curing diseases (yay!) or threatening humanity (uh-oh), it won’t belong in mainstream business communication for the foreseeable.
When communicating about AI development:
Set the correct context: "Today's AI systems are designed for specific tasks"
Be explicit about current capabilities: "This AI tool analyzes customer feedback to identify trends"
Be informed about the future, but ground those discussions in reality: "While AI capabilities continue to expand in specific areas, we're focused on practical applications that deliver value today"
This approach helps you demonstrate your understanding of AI's developmental stages, keep messaging grounded in real applications and avoid feeding the hype machine.
Get this right and you’ll show your AI expertise while maintaining credibility.
More rapid reads
Unpack suitcase words or risk confusion
Leave chess-playing computers in the past