Aug 12, 2026
My stubborn and completely uninformed opinions on AGI:
- when AGI finally arrives it will be blindingly obvious and there will be no debate whether it’s here
- this is in fact a good proxy test: so long as reasonable people earnestly disagree, it is not here. This test is circular, unsatisfactory, yet useful
- we will have a precise definition of what AGI is when the proxy test is passed. The reference implementation will inform the definition
- we have not passed the Turing test. People were tricked for a while the way they were with Eliza, but that decays fast. Not only can you tell you’re chatting with a model, you can often tell which model it is (of course the level of sophistication is incomparable)
- this says nothing about the timelines. Labs may have AGI tech internally already, or it may take another few years of doubling, or we may be far away, I don't know
- none of this diminishes the risk or utility of what's coming