China’s early January 2025 release of DeepSeek AI-assistant has shocked the technological world. What are the implications, besides adding extra fuel to the fire of the AI debate?
As immediately coined “A straight shot to ASI” by Google’s executives, we cannot but state that the international race toward ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) is now officially on.
Why should you and everyone around be concerned?
Take a look at our four reasons below and make up your mind about whether you should take the race toward ASI seriously.
#1. Agentic AI in 2025
Will we have AI agents looking like “The Men In Black” doing secret operations for the government? Well, jokes apart, agentic in the sense of AI will mean autonomous decision-making and solving complex, multi-step problems.
Agentic AI represents a huge leap forward in artificial technologies. Until now, even the most advanced LLMs (large language models) had to wait for human commands to engage in a conversation or perform an operation.
Why does it concern you?
– Security vulnerabilities: Advanced computing power combined with autonomous decision-making can quickly turn unpredictable, posing cybersecurity, financial, and ethical risks.
– Competitive advantage: The early adopters of agentic AI will gain a significant competitive advantage over those who “stand still.”
– Governance challenges: Poorly designed oversight mechanisms could lead agentic AI to quickly “break free,” leading to unintended consequences.
Advancements and add-ons to LLMs in the form of homemade hosting with two-way voice support, multimodal integration, and extensive use of cloud-based solutions are likely to increase the gap between those who embrace agentic AI and those who don’t.
#2. Mass Spread of Humanoid Robots by 2026
Robotics always lag behind software in development pace. This was the case with industrial robots during the Industrial Revolution, and it will be the same with AI-powered robots.
It is simply technologically more difficult to produce a sophisticated human-like machine that can elaborately interact with the physical world.
However, already by 2026, Tesla plans to produce between 50,000 and 100,000 humanoid robots called Optimus.
Why should you worry?
– Psychological impact: Imagine human-like robots among us. Will you feel comfortable? How much will your human relationships be affected?
– Job displacement: Even jobs associated with complex mechanical movements will be done by robots (e.g., construction, engineering, food production, cleaning, etc.).
– Alarming military applications: Already today, flying drones dominate the battlefield. Imagine armies of humanoid robots marching on the ground. Sounds scary?
The first robots are likely to be expensive, which will be the number one slowing factor in their spread, giving you some time to prepare.
#3. AGI in 2027 – A Straight Shot to ASI
The AGI, or artificial general intelligence, is the equivalent of a single human brain power. At least, this is how the broader scientific and technological community views it.
The pivotal point and the hallmark of AGI’s appearance is passing the notorious Turing test – when a human tester won’t be able to distinguish between a machine and a human in a conversation.
Many believe the AGI is as close as 2–4 years away. However, some say it can happen already in 2025. Either way, beyond this point, an AI should be able to improve itself at an exponential rate.
Just imagine the process of biological evolution happening not within millions and billions of years but within a month or week time. That’s why some Google and OpenAI officials openly call the AGI moment a “straight shot to ASI,” which is the superintelligence.
Ray Kurzweil talks of this event as the technological singularity, which resonates with the pre-Big Bang state of the universe when the world was infinitely small, i.e., the cosmological singularity.
And here comes the spooky part: scientists don’t know and cannot even speculate what life will be like when the technological singularity happens, just as they don’t know what was before the Big Bang.
Kurzweil’s conservative estimates point to 2045 as the year of singularity, while the current whirlpool of AI progress indicates this could happen a lot faster, circa 2037.
#4. Meet the New Job Market
Perhaps the most widely discussed consequence of AI progress is its impact on work. You may think there is nothing to worry about and that we’ve all lived through it during the industrial revolution or the mass spread of the Internet.
This time, though, it will be drastically different because AI is taking over the creative, decision-making, and problem-solving tasks. The AI race heralds massive job loss when virtually everyone will be affected.
What can you possibly do to prepare for what’s coming? Actually, several things:
– Master the new tools: The AI age will involve the cooperation or symbiosis of smart machines and humans. So, learning how to use AI tools will become a must-have skill.
– Be among the top 10% performers in your job: All jobs will be affected, but you stand a good chance of keeping yours if you are extremely good at what you do.
– Learn to think critically: The ability to distinguish between what’s fake and what’s true will become even more important in the age when people’s avatars and AI bots will be the dominant newsmakers and influencers.
– Ideation and strategic thinking: There is hope that the ability to think strategically, make long-term plans, and imagine things (as the futurologist Michio Kaku says: “dreaming about the future”) will help us stay competitive.
In doing all or any of the above, you must hurry. The job market will be transformed by agentic AI already by the end of 2025.
The Key Takeaway
Whether we end up in a dystopian abundance world or a technological and civilizational catastrophe, one thing remains clear – everyone will be affected.
Unlike the previous technological revolutions, the AI one threatens to change the very fabric of what it means to be a human: create, make decisions, and solve problems. Therefore, not taking the ongoing ASI race seriously is a luxury no one can afford.
