Do You Want Artificial General Intelligence?

AI companies have forgotten to ask if we want what they want for us

You haven’t been asked that question, have you? I certainly have not. I’ve read so many “expert takes” about what artificial general intelligence (AGI) is or when it will arrive, that I can declare with a humbling amount of certainty that no one has a clue of the answers. The best approach to AGI is to accept that we don’t know “how” or “when”.

Yet, not once have I heard anyone asking “why”. Does the world want AGI at all?

So, let me be first: Do you want AGI (however you define it)? If you do, great! You are for a good time in the coming years (or decades) If you don’t (or if you don’t really care, an answer I take as equally valid), you are not alone — you belong to the majority, actually, as we will see.

But it doesn’t matter, right? Because neither you nor I (nor that majority) have any power over the answer to that question. AI companies — OpenAI (and Microsoft), Google DeepMind, and Anthropic — don’t really care about what we want. They are GOMA. They are Big AI, and they control this technology and its future.

So, AGI it is.

But it’s funny if you think about it because Big AI doesn’t even care about what it wants. This sounds strange but it isn’t when you understand their beliefs.