What AGI? ChatGPT can’t even set a timer


OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said it may be a year before ChatGPT can set a timer. That’s not very good optics for a company building superintelligence.

Altman’s appearance on the show Mostly Human took an unexpected turn when he was shown a viral video of a TikToker using a voice command to ask ChatGPT to set a timer for his run.

In the video, the chatbot is seen hallucinating and refusing to admit that it cannot track time.

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Altman, who watched the video live on camera, said it was a known issue and admitted that the voice model doesn’t have a timer tool.

He told the host Laurie Segall that it may take “maybe another year” before ChatGPT can handle timing.

As Altman’s response began circulating on social media, the TikToker, who goes by “huskistaken,” asked the chatbot to respond to the interview.

The chatbot admitted that some models don’t have the capability to set a timer, but assured the user that it did.

“I can tell you that right now I definitely have a timer capability,” the chatbot said.

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The chatbot’s failure to perform a task as simple as setting the time stands in stark contrast to OpenAI CEO’s predictions about general artificial intelligence (AGI), a type of superintelligence that matches or surpasses human capabilities across intellectual tasks.

Earlier this year, Altman predicted that early versions of true superintelligence could emerge by 2028. He noted the rapid advancement of AI systems, saying that they evolved from struggling with high school arithmetic to handling research-level mathematics.


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