Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More
The distant horizon is always murky, the minute details obscured by sheer distance and atmospheric haze. This is why forecasting the future is so imprecise: We cannot clearly see the outlines of the shapes and events ahead of us. Instead, we take educated guesses.
The newly published AI 2027 scenario, developed by a team of AI researchers and forecasters with experience at institutions like OpenAI and The Center for AI Policy, offers a detailed 2 to 3-year forecast for the future that includes specific technical milestones. Being near-term, it speaks with great clarity about our AI near future.
Informed by extensive expert feedback and scenario planning exercises, AI 2027 outlines a quarter-by-quarter progression of anticipated AI capabilities, notably multimodal models achieving advanced reasoning and autonomy. What makes this forecast particularly noteworthy is both its specificity and the credibility of its contributors, who have direct insight into current research pipelines.
The most notable prediction is that artificial general intelligence (AGI) will be achieved in 2027, and artificial superintelligence (ASI) will follow months later. AGI matches or exceeds human capabilities across virtually all cognitive tasks, from scientific research to creative endeavors, while demonstrating adaptability, common sense reasoning and self-improvement. ASI goes further, representing systems that dramatically surpass human intelligence, with the ability to solve problems we cannot even comprehend.
Like many predictions, these are based on assumptions, not the least of which is that AI models and applications will continue to progress exponentially, as they have for the last several years. As such, it is plausible, but not guaranteed to expect exponential progress, especially as scaling of these models may now be hitting diminishing returns.
Not everyone agrees with these predictions. Ali Farhadi, the CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, told The New York Times: “I’m all for projections and forecasts, but this [AI 2027] forecast doesn’t seem to be grounded in scientific evidence, or the reality of how things …