Artificial intelligence is something that has been part of our conversations for quite some time, but it used to be rather abstract. The arrival of the AI chatbot ChatGPT has brought this concept into our everyday lives. Virtually anyone with internet access can now experience the power of AI. But we’re still a long way from a machine—or network of AI machines—capable of learning to do everything humans can do, although there’s a growing consensus among experts that this will happen in the future. How soon? Opinions on this are much more divided. 

Our World in Data compiled the responses of 352 experts surveyed in mid-2022 into a timeline as part of a study led by scholar Katja Grace of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford (HERE) on when they expect AI to outperform human intelligence. While a very small group of experts believes this will never happen, half believe it will happen before 2061, while 90% place the date sometime within the next 100 years.