Experts in artificial intelligence left podcaster Joe Rogan stunned as they spoke about how quickly the technology is evolving.

During a segment on The Joe Rogan Show, the UFC commentator had a chat with Jeremie and Eduoard Harris, who are the CEO and CTO of Gladstone AI, respectively.

Gladstone AI is dedicated to promoting the responsible development and adoption of artificial intelligence.

Rogan got into his concerns about the emerging technology with the guests right off the bat.

‘If there’s a doomsday clock for AI… what time is it?’ he asked the duo.

Jeremie mentioned that experts in the AI field have varying opinions but suggested that AI might reach human-level capabilities by 2027 or 2028.

‘You’ll be able to have AI on your show and ask it what the doomsday clock is like by then,’ he quipped.

But Rogan lamented that the AI probably would not laugh at his jokes.

Jeremie explained that a lab called METR recently conducted a study that showed how quickly AI models are improving.

In a particular study, AI models were assigned tasks that humans typically do, and their completion times were compared to those of humans. This helped in assessing the progress of artificial intelligence.

They found that the technology completed tasks that would take humans less than four minutes to complete with a nearly 100 percent success rate and a 50 percent success rate for tasks that take humans an hour to complete.

Eduoard then noted that the rate is increasing almost every four months, especially for tasks involving research and software engineering.

By 2027, they concluded, the kind of work an AI researcher does in a month could be done by the AI itself with a 50 percent success rate. 

At that point, Eduoard joked, Rogan could have an AI system as a guest and ask it itself what a doomsday clock looks like. 

The troubling interview came as Demis Hassabis, the CEO of DeepMind at Google, shared his belief that scientists are on track to create Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) within the next five to ten years.

AGI refers to artificial intelligence with software that rivals the cognitive ability of a human. 

It’s a hypothetical stage of AI advancement, as currently the technology can only pull from existing content and doesn’t have the curiosity or imagination to create new concepts like humans do. 

However, Hassabis believes that AGI is on track to become ’embedded’ in our daily lives by 2035. 

He also said that today’s technology hasn’t yet achieved ‘consciousness’ and revealed that it’s a possibility that AI bots may eventually develop self-awareness.

When that does happen, though, Hassabis said it may be difficult for humans to recognize. 

‘With machines – they’re running on silicon, so even if they exhibit the same behaviors, and even if they say the same things, it doesn’t necessarily mean that this sensation of consciousness that we have is the same thing they will have,’ the Nobel Prize winner explained. 

If the AI models continue to progress, Hassabis said it could be the end of human diseases and the climate crisis, he told Time Magazine in a separate interview.

‘I think some of the biggest problems that face us today as a society, whether that’s climate or disease, will be helped by AI solutions,’ he told the publication. 

‘I’d be very worried about society today if I didn’t know that something as transformative as AI was coming down the line.’

At the same time though, Hassabis acknowledged that AI could cause destruction – especially if international cooperation isn’t achieved.

He argued that the AI models need to be tested for dangerous capabilities, and legal guardrails need to be implemented to prevent the technology from falling into the wrong hands.

He noted that it is ‘extremely difficult’ to monitor AI advancement to prevent systems from acting autonomously. 

Other AI experts have offered a more pessimistic perspective on the future, with computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton predicting that AI will wipe out the human race. 

Hinton is known as the ‘Godfather of AI’ for his work creating the foundations for machine learning. 

He was a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, but recently resigned from his job at Google out of concern that AI advancement was going in a dangerous direction.

‘The situation we’re in now is that most of the experts in the field think that sometime, within probably the next 20 years, we’re going to develop AIs that are smarter than people,’ Hinton revealed in an interview with the BBC. 

‘And that’s a very scary thought,’ he added.

Hinton also said that whether AI helps or hurts society in the future is dependent on how the government regulates it. 

‘We need regulations to stop people using it for bad things, and we don’t appear to have those kinds of political systems in place at present,’ he explained. 

Microsoft founder Bill Gates offered a similar concern in a recent interview with Jimmy Fallon. 

‘I love the way it’ll drive innovation forward, but I think it’s a little bit unknown if we’ll be able to shape it. And so, legitimately, people are like “wow, this is a bit scary.” It’s completely new territory,’ he explained.