AGI Has Been Achieved Internally

Here’s the AGI question no one asks, which is also the one we’ll have to face first

“AGI has been achieved internally” has been the sentence of the week.

It was cryptic and called out as bullshit when “Jimmy Apples” tweeted it out on September 18th. It was shocking, for good or bad, when Sam Altman echoed it in a Reddit comment a week later. And it ended in a funny joke when he edited it to reveal he was just “memeing”.

The sentence was many things, but the truest of all is that it isn’t true. AGI hasn’t been achieved internally.

Or has it?

Well, we don’t really know. In part because we don’t have a consensual conceptualization for the term “AGI” (although true and important, this reason is boring). In part because Altman’s company has become so close that the name “OpenAI” is a meme itself. And in part because we don’t have the means to assess whether something is or not an AGI — Schrodinger’s cat has been replaced and we don’t know how to open the box.

Yet that sentence — one more time, for effect; “AGI has been achieved internally” — regardless of its epistemic status, is a powerful one.

At least coming out of the right mouth. If I say it, no one cares. Reasonably. That anon…