Acquired Insight (AI) on Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Jonathan Schaeffer · 2026
The concluding chapter reflects on AI’s past, present, and future. The big question today is whether and, if so, when Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) may be achieved. Reflecting on the history of AI, Turing Award winner Rich Sutton presents the “Bitter Lesson” of AI, that all that seems to matter is the parts of AI that improve with additional computing: search and learning. Today’s chatbots take this lesson to the extreme. The race is on to pump enormous amounts of money into building the most powerful chatbots possible. Numerous experts weigh in on the AGI debate. We conclude with a statement about the overarching theme of the book: artificial intelligence is superficial intelligence. The current successful technologies are naive and unhuman like. It doesn’t matter. It’s the result that counts. The chapter concludes with an essay written by ChatGPT on why you shouldn’t fear AI. It’s impressive and convincing, but perhaps self-serving! In a sidebar, AI researcher Demis Hassabis is introduced, a 2024 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry. He led the team to produce the program AlphaFold, which is revolutionizing the research into proteins and life itself.