AI Embodiment Through 6G: Shaping the Future of AGI

In the ever-evolving field of technologies, the emergence of artificial general intelligence (AGI), often referred as strong artificial intelligence (AI), stands as a breakthrough in the realm of machine intelligence, promising to witness a new era of capabilities and possibilities. In particular, AGI ventures into human-level cognition, and expands to thinking, reasoning, and awareness. This imminent evolution is envisioned to be manifested through the embodiment of AI machines, allowing machines to transcend their purely computational nature and interact with the world through the different senses. Accordingly, AI agents will be grounded in the physical environment, going through subjective experiences and acquiring the needed knowledge that will lead to understanding and cognition. In our article, we explore the path toward realizing the true vision of AGI through AI embodiment, where we dig into the different types of thinking required to achieve knowledge, and hence, cognition and understanding. Furthermore, we look through the evolution of generative AI models, and shed light on the limitations of auto-regression in large language models (LLMs), with the aim to answer the question: is sensory grounding (through 6G) necessary, and enough, to achieve understanding in LLMs? Finally, we identify the main pillars of AGI and unveil how 6G networks will orchestrate the development of AGI systems.