What if machines could match human cognitive abilities not just in narrow tasks, but across the full spectrum of intelligence?
This is the promise of artificial general intelligence (AGI), a concept that invites exciting possibilities but opens up a number of other questions:
What pathways are there to achieving AGI?
What milestones mark meaningful progress?
How will we recognise when AGI has arrived?
And what new opportunities – or challenges – might emerge once we get there?
In this discussion, DSI Visiting Professor and Professor of AI at the University of Bath Professor Nello Cristianini joins the DSI for a forward-looking discussion on the current state of AGI research.
Nello Cristianini is a Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bath and the author of a trilogy on the age of intelligent machines, published by CRC Press (The shortcut, 2023; Machina Sapiens, 2025; Superhuman – English translation forthcoming, 2026). Cristianini holds a degree in Physics (University of Trieste), a Master's in Computational Intelligence (University of London), and a PhD in Engineering Mathematics (University of Bristol). He previously held professorships at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Bristol. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Data Science Institute LSE.
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