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The technology industry has always adored its improbably audacious goals and their associated buzzwords. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is among the most enamored. After all, the name Meta is the residue of his 2021 rebranding of the company formerly known as Facebook Inc. That was supposed to emphasize an utter commitment to building the metaversean ambitious yet fuzzy concept blurring aspects of virtual reality, augmented reality, and social networking. Except Zuckerbergs goals have already drifted. Now hes all-in on attaining an advanced form of AI called superintelligence. Its the focus of a new organization called Meta Superintelligence Labs, which Meta is stocking with some of the planets top AI talent. Whether the company is really dangling $100 million offers to snag some potential recruits remains unclear. But MSL is led by Alexandr Wang, who joined Meta in June as part of a deal involving it investing $14 billion in his startup, Scale AIan eye-watering sum all by itself. The term superintelligence isnt new (it was the title of a 2014 book by philosopher Nick Bostrom), but it may turn out to be 2025s buzzword of the year. A few more data points: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently declared that his company is a lot of things now, but before anything else, we are a superintelligence research company. One of Altmans OpenAI cofounders, famed AI scientist Ilya Sutskever, left a year ago to cofound a new startup called Safe Superintelligence, which just lost another of its founders, Daniel Gross, to Metas new lab. Last month, when Microsoft said it had trained AI to diagnose disease more accurately than doctors can, its AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, called the feat a genuine step toward medical superintelligence. So what is superintelligence? In an excellent piece on its emergence as a Silicon Valley obsession, Bloombergs Shirin Ghaffary defines it as AI that is not just at parity with most people, but even better than all humans at all tasks. Ghaffary says the industry is gravitating toward superintelligence because its a more tangible goal than artificial general intelligence, or AGI. Google DeepMind chief AGI scientist Shane Legg, who popularized that term, defined it for me as something that can at least match human capability in the sorts of cognitive tasks that people can typically do. Even better than humans at all tasks would seem to be a substantially loftier ambition than merely matching human capability in tasks that people can typically do. But over at IBM.com, an article says we definitely havent achieved AGI but arguably have achieved superintelligence. Thats because the IBM pieces far less sweeping definition of superintelligence only involves it outperforming humans at certain jobs, not all of them. It cites four existing examples: IBMs own Deep Blue (chess) and Watson (Jeopardy!) along with Google DeepMinds AlphaGo (Go) and AlphaFold (protein structure predictions). All of this leaves me with more questions than answers: If IBMs four examples arent enough to confirm that superintelligence has been attained, how many would be? Who gets to decide what better than humans means? What happens if AI sails past humans on some fronts while remaining stubbornly behind on others? Dont many of our skills involve the ability to interact with the physical world, making surpassing them as much about robotics as software? (Meta is working on that, too.) This we do know: Like AGI before it, superintelligence is inherently aspirational. It exists as a notion in part so that groups of people have something to race toward. In that sense, it bears some resemblance to past moonshots such as, well, NASAs Apollo program. The difference is that superintelligence offers no well-defined end point akin to landing a human being on the moon, which youve either accomplished or you havent. There will be no superintelligence equivalent of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the lunar surface on July 20, 1969. Back in March 2024, I wrote about the pointlessness of fixating on what AGI is and when it might be achieved. Swapping in superintelligence as fodder for this debate doesnt accomplish anything. Yes, we all need to gird ourselves for a world in which AI competes with people for jobs. I dont discount the possibility of it presenting existential risks to humanity. It will unquestionably cause trouble of types yet to be identified. Andfingers crossedit may help with some of our thorniest unsolved problems. These points remain true no matter how you define superintelligence and regardless of whether its ever reached. Which means that fixating on the race for it isnt a terribly productive way of readying ourselves for AIs future impact on our lives. Meanwhile, AI companies still have a spotty record at figuring out practical applications for AI in its present, less-than-superintelligent state. Thats especially tue for Meta, which has larded my Facebook feed with clueless Meta AI interjections wholly incapable of grasping the conversations theyre trying to join. Meta getting better at using the AI it already has would be an encouraging sign that its quest for superintelligence isnt just raw, unbridled ambition in search of actual useful purpose. Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company Linda Yaccarino was supposed to tame X. Elon Musk wouldnt let herThe newly departed CEO was supposed to fix brand safety and win back advertisers. Instead, she became a corporate mascot for a platform in free fall. Read More Samsung fixed everything you hated about foldable phonesexcept the priceTheres no Fold Ultra, but Samsung still believes in foldables. Read More The internet is tryingand failingto spend Elon Musks $342 billionNew online games and TikTok trends challenge users to spend the Tesla CEOs fortunerevealing the absurd scale of his wealth. Read More YouTube to Hollywood: We are going to eat youYouTubes TV takeover is starting to feel inevitable. Read More People are boycotting Etsy over Alligator Alcatraz merchBuyers and sellers on Etsy are protesting the platform until merch celebrating the Trump administrations Florida detention center is taken down. Read More How to use AI to networkExperts offer tips on the dos and donts of using AI to build your network and land your dream job. Read More
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From being the face of memestock mania to going viral for inadvertently stapling the screens of brand-new video game consoles, GameStop is no stranger to infamy. Last month, during the midnight release of the highly anticipated Nintendo Switch 2, employees at GameStop’s Staten Island location punctured both the cardboard packaging and screens of some devices in a single motionwhile stapling customers receipts. Although the company replaced the damaged devices, the incident quickly went viral on social media. Now, in typical GameStop fashion, the company is selling what it calls “authentic relics from the now-infamous ‘Staplegate’ incident,” launching an eBay auction on July 9 starting at $1. “Sometimes the universe hands you a stapler and says, Run with it. So we didfor a good cause,” a company spokesperson tells Fast Company. The stapler in question is described in the listing as having “authentic field-use wear throughout.” In the spokespersons words, The stapler now stands as a retail legend born from a half-second decision. At the time of this writing, the listing had received more than 200 bids, the highest reaching $122,800. According to the company, all proceeds will be donated to Childrens Miracle Network Hospitals. In addition to the stapler, the listing includes “the first known console to be officially stapled during a product launch by GameStop,” the stapled box, the removed single staple, and a certificate of authenticity signed by GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen. The auction aligns with GameStops history of unconventional decisionsincluding the announcement earlier this year that the company would invest its cash, equity issuances, and future debt into Bitcoin. The listing gained nearly 250,000 views within its first 24 hours and is rapidly gaining traction on social media, in part due to comments made by the CEO. “If this reaches six figures I will include my underwear,” Cohen said on X. When the listing surpassed $100,000, he promised another prize: “If this reaches seven figures I will fly the winner to Miami, take them to McDonalds for lunch and personally deliver my preowned underwear.” Users on social media have flooded the posts comment section, sharing AI-generated images of the proposed transaction and asking questions. “Important detail needed: Used or laundered?” one person replied on X. As to the state of the CEOs undergarments, the GameStop spokesperson tells Fast Company: “The winner will have to find out.”
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Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD claims it has delivered what Elon Musk has promised forever but has failed to deliver again and again: a car that can park itself with full Level 4 (L4) autonomy. That means that the car can navigate a parking lot, find a spot, and park completely unattended. Some cars have assisted parking, including brands like BMW, Nissan, and Tesla, but none offers total autonomy except Mercedes-Benz. The latter is only a very limited L4 parking test confined to a single airport parking lot in Stuttgart, Germany, with special equipment installed. BYD’s system operates outside dedicated structures and is not restricted to pre-mapped locations. The company is so confident in the technology that it announced that it will cover any damages to your car or any other vehicle if things go wrong. This means if anything happens, the owner wont have to file a claim and have their premiums go up. The breakthrough comes with the latest over-the-air update of BYD’s God’s Eye intelligent driving system, which now numbers more than 1 million cars across China. Theres no word when it will come to other markets. The eye that sees it all BYD’s confidence stems from a sophisticated sensor architecture. The God’s Eye system deploys multiple sensing technologies working in concert, unlike Tesla’s problematic camera-only approach. Even the entry-level God’s Eye C variantone of three autonomous driving levels included in most affordable modelsincludes 12 cameras, 5 millimeter-wave radars, and 12 ultrasonic sensors with 1-centimeter accuracy. The mid-tier God’s Eye B adds a lidar sensor, while the premium God’s Eye A variant features three lidar sensors for maximum precision. The system’s parking accuracy allows the car to get within 0.8 inches of other objects, enabled by multiple redundant sensors that create a three-dimensional map. This allows the vehicle a deep understanding of its environment. This multi-sensor approach allows the system to detect obstacles. It can even recognize hanging objects over the roof line of the car. The company reports that more than 1 million vehicles now carry the God’s Eye system, an impressive deployment scale that starts with the most inexpensive models, like the $9,550 BYD Seagull, and go all the way to the $236,000 BYD Yangwang U9, a hypercar that can detect potholes on the road and jump over them. Yes. If the Gods Eye detects an obstacle on the road, it will literally jump over it. Mercedes-Benz is the only company that approaches BYDs new ability, and it only does so by cheating. Working with German hardware maker Bosch, it achieved L4 parking certification in 2022. But the automaker’s system operates exclusively in the P6 parking garage at Stuttgart Airport, requiring specific infrastructure and limiting availability to select S-Class and EQS models. Drivers must book parking spaces through the Mercedes Me app and drop off vehicles in designated zones, making the system more of a controlled experiment than practical technology. Even if Mercedes could extend the idea to other parking lots throughout the worldwhich seem impracticalthis approach lacks the flexibility and scalability of BYD’s vehicle-centric solution. BMW and other premium automakers offer advanced parking assistance but remain stuck at Level 2 automation. BMW’s Parking Assistant Professional can perform parallel and perpendicular parking, but requires constant driver supervision and cannot achieve true autonomous operation. The system includes features like remote control parking and recorded path memory, but falls short of the true hands-off capability that defines L4 autonomy, which BYD is claiming with its new Gods Eye update. Chinese manufacturers are heavily investing in AI capabilities for their cars. BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu claims that it has 5,000 AI engineers working exclusively on solving full L4 autonomy. Companies like Baidu (whose open-source autonomous driving system Apollo is used by Volvo), Xiaomi, and Xpeng, are on similar paths. Chuanfu believes that Gods Eyes will provide full L4 in the next two to three years. Tesla’s falling way behind But perhaps the technology gap is more obvious when you compare it to Tesla which has been claiming full autonomous driving next year for the last seven years. While BYD and the other Chinese manufacturers deploy multiple sensor types for redundancy and accuracy, Musk decided that Tesla should abandon ultrasonic sensors in favor of cameras alone, creating dangerous blind spots and unreliable distance measurements. There have been multiple reports of Tesla autonomous driving problems. Like BMW and Mercedes, Tesla has a basic parking assist feature, too. Its owners report persistent errors, particularly in rain, snow, or low-light conditions where cameras lose effectiveness. The system’s unreliability has become so notorious that Tesla forums overflow with complaints about parking functionality that worked better in older vehicles with dedicated sensors. Musk’s dismissal of lidar as “a crutch” and “loser’s technology” has clearly left Tesla technologically behind competitors who have embraced multi-sensor approaches. BYD’s L4 parking achievement and its financial guarantee shows who the real loser is here. Not only Musk, but the entire Western automobile industry. s Fords CEO Jim Farley told the audience at the Aspen Ideas Summit last month talking about his last visit to China: Its the most humbling thing Ive ever seen . . . their cost, their quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the West. We are in a global competition with China, and its not just EVs. And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford. Ford and everyone else, Im afraid.
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