Yes, but that is a harder problem in some ways. It’s an open question whether we will be able to get there using current approaches or we will need some kind of new breakthrough. This is actually at the center of the recent drama around OpenAI, the former CEO Sam Altman believes it will require a new approach, the chief scientist believes some future iteration of something like ChatGPT will be able to do it.
The problem in some way seen as the “holy grail” of this line of research. Once these models are able to do, for example, physics research on their own (or research to build a better version of themselves!), we expect general technological progress to rapidly accelerate. You could imagine a world where we wake up one day and AI is better at most knowledge based jobs than humans. It’s unimaginable what impact this will have on society at large. It will happen in our lifetimes.
