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Why We'll Have AGI by 2025-2028
We don't need a single model to be AGI-capable because it's all about the systems, not the components
People are thinking a lot about when weāre going to get Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and I think itās coming faster than most.
AGI is distinct from regular AI because regular AI is ānarrow,ā meaning itās only good at a very specific thing and canāt adapt to complexity like humans. An AI thatās good at multiple things, or is able to handle complexity, would be monumental. It would be direct competition for humansāespecially human workers.
For the longest time, the consensus of the best experts was that either this would 1) never happen, or 2) it would come many decades from now.
But, given whatās happened in the last year with GenAI and ChatGPT, thatās now changing. Given all these developments, my prediction is a 60% chance of AGI in 2025 and a 90% of AGI in 2028.
But before we get too deep into it, we need to more accurately define what we mean by AGI. Hereās Sam Altmanās definition:
For me, AGIā¦is the equivalent of a median human that you could hire as a co-worker.
This is a decent attempt, but I think it has a couple of problems. First, it seems to focus on knowledge work but it doesnāt say so. Like this isnāt an average construction worker heās talking about. AGI things are not robot things.
Second, the word āmedianā is problematic. Why not say average? Because mean and median are two different types of average, and they have different meanings, thatās why.
Anyway, hereās my definition that I think is more in line with what people really mean when they talk about AGI:
An AI system capable of replacing a knowledge worker making the average salary in the United States.
I think this is a better definition because itās more specific. Payscale did a study of 302 different knowledge worker salary profiles, and found the average salary to be $87,342.
Cool, so letās say that an AGI is a system that can replace an average knowledge worker in the US making an average salary.
So how could that happen?
Paths to AGI
A lot of people are skeptical of imminent AGI because theyāve made the mistake of thinking it has to come from one component.
Theyāre imagining some new model like GPT-6 being AGI-capable by itself. Thatās one way to get there, but itās not the only way. And Iād argue itās not how weāll get there first.
I think weāll get there through an AGI system, not an AGI component.
Systems vs. components
Systems do most of the work we see in the world.
Ant colonies are more powerful than ants
Families are more powerful than dads
Companies are more powerful than employees
This isnāt just numbers. Itās the combination of having objectives at different levels, the division of labor, and the execution of those roles that all make progress toward a shared goal.
And hereās the crazy connection to AGI:
We donāt need a single ant to become a colony. Or a single kid to become a family. Or a single knowledge worker to become as capable as a company.
We just need a system of AIs that works together to accomplish a shared goal.
So, if itās a Customer Service AGI, it might have:
a top-level agent
an agent over multiple sub-departments
multiple teams of actual service representatives under each sub-department
The teams of agents will be trained in a particular region, on a particular language, and theyāll be accustomed to certain types of questions and problems. They might have slightly different goals as well. But theyāre all unified by the goal of the tier above it. Same thing all the way up the tiers to the top.
So what you end up with is a system of AIs that are not individually AGI-capable, but the system as a whole is.
And remember, the standard is pretty low here. Our AGI definition is something that replaces a single worker! But a system like this, with all the various tiers of agents, will likely be able to replace an entire department.
Thereās another way in which this bar is low. If you want to replace the head of customer service for Bank of America, thatās a very senior position, and the person you need to find will have years of experience in very similar roles. You canāt just grab someone who has a career running accounting teams.
So we donāt even need the Customer Services AGI system to be the same system that we use for Accounting or Threat Intelligence. We can hire a separate AGI system for that.
But itās still AGI.
Why? Because it has (at least) replaced the capabilities of an average knowledge worker making an average US salary, which is our definition.
Summary
This is why AGI is coming sooner rather than later.
Weāre not waiting for a single model with the general flexibility/capability of an average worker. Weāre waiting for a single AGI system that can do that.
To the human controlling it, itās the same. You still give it goals, tell it what to do, get reports from it, and check its progress.
Just like a co-worker or employee.
And honestly, weāre getting so close already that my 90% chance by 2028 might not be optimistic enough.