According to Forbes, artificial general intelligence has become the explicit target for some of the world’s largest corporations, with Mark Zuckerberg now aiming to create smarter-than-human AGI at Meta and OpenAI’s charter specifically mentioning “planning for AGI and beyond.” The debate around AGI’s potential impact has intensified dramatically, with nearly 70,000 people including AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak signing the Statement on Superintelligence calling for a prohibition on superintelligence development. Author and futurist Gregory Stock argues at the Beneficial AGI conference that AGI could mean everything from the death of death to the end of scarcity, while others fear human extinction and economic obsolescence. The central question remains whether organizations like Meta and OpenAI will develop AGI in pro-social ways rather than just to cement their own power, especially given that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s suggestion for a global AI governance body faces resistance from Western rivals.
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The AGI reality check
Here‘s the thing about AGI discussions – they tend to swing wildly between utopian dreams and apocalyptic nightmares. On one side, you’ve got people imagining the end of death and scarcity. On the other, you’ve got serious technologists like Hinton signing letters about existential risks. And honestly? Both sides might be missing what actually matters.
Gregory Stock makes a crucial point that often gets lost in these debates. The most profound changes might not be what machines become, but how humanity changes in response. Think about it – we’re already seeing AI reshape work, creativity, and even relationships. AGI would amplify that by orders of magnitude.
Who controls the future?
This is where it gets really interesting. We’re basically putting the future of humanity in the hands of a few tech corporations. Meta wants AGI. OpenAI’s planning for AGI and beyond is literally part of their charter. And while China’s pushing for global governance, good luck getting the US and Europe to play along with that initiative.
So we’re left hoping these companies develop AGI “responsibly.” But what does that even mean when the potential power is this immense? The Statement on Superintelligence that gathered 70,000 signatures warns about human economic obsolescence and loss of control. Can we really trust corporate entities to prioritize human welfare over shareholder value when the stakes are this high?
The open-source wild card
There’s another possibility that doesn’t get enough attention – what if independent or open-source organizations get there first? Or at least simultaneously? That could fundamentally change the power dynamics. Instead of AGI being controlled by a handful of Silicon Valley giants, we might see a more distributed development path.
Look at what’s happening with current AI models – open-source alternatives are keeping pressure on the big players. If that pattern holds with AGI, we might actually have a shot at spreading the benefits more widely. But it’s a race, and the resources required for AGI development are staggering.
Preparing for whatever comes
Nobody can fully predict what happens when machines become smarter than humans. The exponential learning rates Stock mentions could lead to changes we literally can’t comprehend from our current vantage point. So what do we do in the meantime?
Basically, we need to prepare for multiple possible futures simultaneously. The doomers might be right about existential risks. The optimists might be right about solving disease and poverty. The reality will probably be somewhere in between – messy, unpredictable, and full of surprises. One thing’s for sure: the companies racing toward AGI right now are building the foundation for whatever comes next, whether we’re ready or not.
