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We may have already passed key AGI thresholds, such as AIs solving previously unsolved mathematical conjectures. However, instead of a dramatic societal shift, these breakthroughs are met with a collective "shrug." The future arrives gradually and is quickly assimilated into a new normal, feeling far less strange than sci-fi predicted.
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Sci-fi predicted parades when AI passed the Turing test, but in reality, it happened with models like GPT-3.5 and the world barely noticed. This reveals humanity's incredible ability to quickly normalize profound technological leaps and simply move the goalposts for what feels revolutionary.
The discourse often presents a binary: AI plateaus below human level or undergoes a runaway singularity. A plausible but overlooked alternative is a "superhuman plateau," where AI is vastly superior to humans but still constrained by physical limits, transforming society without becoming omnipotent.
Top mathematician Timothy Gowers was relieved an AI model disproved a conjecture with a counterexample rather than proving it, considering the former an 'easier' task. This reaction from one of the world's smartest people highlights the palpable and imminent arrival of superhuman intelligence.
The pursuit of AGI may mirror the history of the Turing Test. Once ChatGPT clearly passed the test, the milestone was dismissed as unimportant. Similarly, as AI achieves what we now call AGI, society will likely move the goalposts and decide our original definition was never the true measure of intelligence.
As AI achieves impressive milestones, like assisting in creating a cancer vaccine, the public conversation immediately discounts the achievement. The goalposts shift from "AI helped solve a problem" to demanding a fully autonomous, one-shot solution. This pattern of escalating expectations obscures the real, incremental progress being made.
The passing of the Turing test, once a monumental event, had little cultural impact. We quickly accommodate to world-changing AI, complaining about minor flaws rather than marveling at its existence, much like Louis C.K.'s joke about people complaining on airplanes.
The debate over AGI is reframed: we have already achieved AI that is better than humans at over 50% of individual skills. The bottleneck is not technological capability but the massive cost and effort required to implement and integrate these systems fully, similar to how we have sustainable energy tech but haven't fully transitioned.
The discourse around AGI is caught in a paradox. Either it is already emerging, in which case it's less a cataclysmic event and more an incremental software improvement, or it remains a perpetually receding future goal. This captures the tension between the hype of superhuman intelligence and the reality of software development.
Artificial General Intelligence—AI surpassing humans in most tasks—will be a gradual process, not a sudden, announced moment. It will "sneak in on us" as capabilities incrementally improve, without a clear before-and-after societal shift.
Sam Altman believes the transition to AGI will be less dramatic than people expect. He argues that, like self-driving cars, society will adapt quickly to the new capabilities. The "big switch" moment will feel muted, even as it ushers in a new era of abundance.
