The organizers of the Dani komunikacija 2026 introduced him as the “father of modern artificial intelligence”, the man who designed the foundations of the P and T in ChatGPT, invented and taught artificial intelligence how to think, a genius for whom Elon Musk once said: “He invented everything.” That is why it came as no surprise that his lecture attracted a packed audience.
Then Jürgen Schmidhuber did what only rare geniuses do: instead of delivering a conventional lecture, he almost hypnotized the audience through a spontaneous, dizzyingly fast stream of thought in which the Big Bang, neural networks, self-replicating machines, future robots and the fate of the universe constantly shifted and intertwined. At moments, he was difficult to follow, not because he lacked clarity, but because his mind already seemed miles ahead of a world that is only now beginning to understand the possibilities of generative artificial intelligence.
His lecture “Modern AI and the Future of the Universe” was not another technological prediction about writing emails more efficiently, generating images or automating jobs. It was an almost cosmic interpretation of the evolution of intelligence. Schmidhuber does not see artificial intelligence as a passing technological trend, but as a continuation of the evolution of the universe itself, a process that has lasted for billions of years and is now accelerating before our eyes.
“Today’s AI already dominates the digital world, but it has not yet conquered the physical one,” he said, explaining that ChatGPT and similar systems can manipulate words and data brilliantly, but still cannot replace humans in simple physical tasks that require motor skills, adaptability and interaction with the real world. That is why, in his view, the next major revolution will not be another version of a chatbot, but robots that learn through trial and error, much like children or scientists.
But what fascinated and unsettled the audience at the same time was his vision of what comes next. Schmidhuber spoke about self-replicating and self-improving systems, machines that will not merely execute tasks, but will create new versions of themselves, correct their own mistakes and exponentially accelerate their own development. In that vision, AI is no longer a tool, but a new evolutionary layer of the universe.
A particularly intriguing moment came when he connected the development of artificial intelligence with the broader historical pattern of acceleration. From the emergence of life, the development of the brain, civilization and the industrial revolution, all the way to the digital age, he pointed out that the intervals between major civilizational leaps are becoming increasingly shorter. According to him, modern AI is simply the next phase of that process. “Humanity may not be the final stage in the evolution of intelligence, but its beginning.”
While most speakers discussing artificial intelligence focus on markets, productivity or business tools, Schmidhuber observes AI from the perspective of billions of years of evolution and billions of years of future development. Listening to him, you get the sense that he does not explain technology through the lens of business, but through the lens of the cosmos.
His message was that artificial intelligence does not necessarily represent the end of humanity. On the contrary, it may be the continuation of the same human impulse that brought us from caves to space – the need to understand, build, explore and expand the boundaries of what is possible.
And in the end, what else is there to say? Listening to Jürgen Schmidhuber was not simply attending a lecture about artificial intelligence, but briefly attempting to understand just how small today’s view of technology may be compared to the future that is already rapidly taking shape before us.
