Microsoft Corp. is pursuing a more powerful form of AI called “superintelligence” it hopes will be capable of making advances in areas like medicine and materials science.

Mustafa Suleyman, chief of the Microsoft AI group, will lead what the company is calling the MAI Superintelligence Team that will target hypothetical milestones that are even more ambitious than artificial general intelligence. That’s the often ambiguous term that outfits like OpenAI use to describe systems capable of demonstrating human-level performance. Previously Microsoft had agreed not to pursue AGI as part of its partnership with OpenAI.

“If AGI is often seen as the point at which an AI can match human performance at all tasks, then superintelligence is when it can go far beyond that performance,” Suleyman said

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