How far away are we from AGI? Stanford experts: AI will reshape white-collar jobs in the next five years.

At the Transform 2025 conference hosted by VentureBeat, Yaad Oren, the global head of research and innovation at SAP, and Emma Brunskill, an associate professor of computer science at Stanford University, joined Susan Etlinger, the senior director of AI strategy and thought leadership at Microsoft Azure, to discuss the strategies needed to tackle future transformative technologies.

01. How the Current Landscape Will Shape the Future

Oren pointed out that the fourth - generation of artificial intelligence, namely generative AI, marks a transformative shift brought by AI to enterprises. He also elaborated on three areas where it brings significant value and transformation to businesses.

Firstly, it's the user experience and the way people interact with software. Secondly, it's the automation at the application layer. SAP has embedded about 230 AI features and agents in its applications and plans to increase this number to 400 by the end of 2025 to improve productivity and reduce costs. The third area is the platform, which is the core engine supporting each enterprise. This has raised new questions about the developer experience, as well as privacy and trust.

Oren concluded, "We're seeing a great deal of transformation at the levels of user experience, the applications themselves, and the platforms that provide all the tools to seize the new opportunities that AI brings to enterprises."

For Brunskill, the key question is how AI can collaborate with humans to create social value, rather than being a thief of human creativity and wisdom. A recent study found that if enterprises position AI tools as productivity - enhancing tools, people will use them far less frequently than when they are positioned as task - enhancing tools.

Brunskill noted, "This is an important insight. When we think about how to transform the extraordinary capabilities of these systems into systems that create value for customers, organizations, etc., we need to consider their positioning."

Oren added that business value at the enterprise level should be the top priority. This means that even as technology evolves, AI in enterprises needs to go beyond the technology itself. The hottest new technologies often bring the least value.

He said, "Nowadays, we're seeing a large number of solutions emerging. For example, creating cool jumping avatars in movies with amazing visual effects, but where's the value? How can it help enterprises reduce costs? How can it improve productivity or revenue? How can it mitigate risks? This kind of thinking hasn't fully taken shape in the AI field. We must start from business problems and quantify the value we hope to achieve."

02. Predictions for the Future of AI

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is a theoretical breakthrough where AI will reach or exceed human generalizability and problem - solving abilities in most cognitive tasks. In the next few years, the future of AI and the definition of AGI will become hot topics.

Brunskill defined AGI as AI being able to perform at least any cognitive task as well as an average person in a certain profession.

She said, "In many white - collar jobs that only require cognitive processing, I think we'll make great progress in the next five years. But we're not ready yet. We need to think creatively about what this means for the industry and what impact it will have on the workforce. I'm very concerned about how to retrain the workforce and how to provide meaningful jobs for future people and what new opportunities this will bring."

Oren said that the future of AGI and its definition are major issues. Although we're still some way from the level many people expect, in the process, we'll witness exciting new technological leaps and six pillars of transformation: next - generation AI that goes beyond current capabilities, future data platforms, robotics, quantum computing, next - generation enterprise user experience, and the future cloud architecture around data privacy.

He said, "The current Transformer architecture pales in comparison to the upcoming technologies. New types of meta - learning, AI self - evolution and creative agents, and emotional AI. The future of AI and the definition of AGI are of great significance."

The future of data itself is also crucial. We're approaching the limit of real - world data, and even data sources like Wikipedia have been fully absorbed by AI models. To drive the next leap in AI, synthetic data generation and improving data quality will be crucial.

In addition, robotics is developing rapidly. From recent innovations like DeepSeek, we know that you can "do more with less" and install very powerful AI on edge devices. Quantum computing will help us achieve a paradigm shift in process optimization and simulation. And the future enterprise user experience will be another transformation, providing users with new types of personalized, scenario - based screen adaptation and immersive experiences.

Oren said, "My children's generation will enter the workplace after 2030. What will their user experience paradigm be? They need to establish an emotional connection with the screen and need adaptive screens, which is very different from our current experience."

The original source is:

1.https://venturebeat.com/ai/ais-fourth-wave-is-here-are-enterprises-ready-for-whats-next/

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