By creating some form of homeostasis within the AGI, Shanahan believes that the potential of AI can be realised without destroying civilisation as we know it.
For an AGI to be able to understand the world in the same way as humans do it would involve certain pre-requisites, including the capacity to recognize others, the ability to form relationships, the ability to communicate, and empathy.
One way of creating a human-like machine is through mimicking the human brain in its design, as Shanahan pointed out, “we know the human brain can achieve this”. Scientists are, however, still some way from even mapping the brain, let alone replicating it.
