Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere, but Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is something entirely different. While AI powers chatbots, image generators, and recommendation engines, it remains narrow—trained for specific tasks. AGI, by contrast, refers to a still-hypothetical system capable of understanding and performing any intellectual task a human can. Yet despite growing attention, AGI has no single agreed-upon definition. What exactly qualifies as “general” intelligence? And how close are we to achieving it? Below are some influential quotes that attempt to define what AGI really means.
6 Definitions
“AGI is a highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work.”
— OpenAI Charter, 2018“AGI would be a system that is able to perform human-level reasoning, understanding, and accomplishing of complicated tasks”
— Jeff Dean, Chief Scientist of Google, 2016“AGI is a system that can generalize knowledge across different domains and exhibit the versatility of human intelligence.”
— Ben Goertzel, CEO of SingularityNET, 2014“There is no such thing as AGI. Even human intelligence is very specialized.”
— Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Meta, 2023“AGI is a hypothetical stage in the development of machine learning (ML) in which an artificial intelligence (AI) system can match or exceed the cognitive abilities of human beings across any task”
— IBM Research, 2023“AGI is a type of artificial intelligence that would match or surpass human capabilities across virtually all cognitive tasks.”
— Wikipedia, 2025
6 Perspectives
“AGI will be the most important technological development in human history.”
— Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, 2023“In the long run, AGI may be the last invention humans need to make.”
— Nick Bostrom, Philosopher at Oxford University, 2014“With artificial general intelligence, we are summoning the demon.”
— Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, 2014“Fearing AGI is like worrying about overpopulation on Mars.”
— Andrew Ng, Co-founder of Google Brain, 2017“The first AGI might be the last invention we ever make, if we do not get it right.”
— Nick Bostrom, Philosopher at Oxford University, 2014“AGI could be the most powerful technology ever invented.”
— Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind, 2023
6 Predictions
“We will have human-level AI by 2029.”
— Ray Kurzweil, Futurist and Google Director of Engineering, 2005“AGI could come in a few years—or it could take decades.”
— Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, 2023“AI could be smarter than humans in 5 to 20 years.”
— Geoffrey Hinton, “Godfather of AI”, 2023“I think AGI might already be here. We just haven’t recognized it yet.”
— Blake Lemoine, Former Google engineer, 2022“We don’t know how to build AGI yet, and we may still be missing fundamental pieces.”
— Yoshua Bengio, Deep learning pioneer, 2023“The transition to AGI will require not just new models but new ideas entirely.”
— Ilya Sutskever, Co-founder of OpenAI, 2023
Top comments (6)
Really enjoyed reading this well-organized breakdown of what AGI could mean—it’s almost comforting to know that even the experts can’t quite agree on what we’re all supposed to be so excited (or afraid) about! It’s refreshing to see both the optimism and the eye-rolls in the perspectives section; with all the grand predictions, I sometimes feel like we’re more likely to see flying cars before a true AGI. The inclusion of quotes from skeptics like Yann LeCun adds some much-needed balance to the conversation; not every AI system is out to summon Elon's demon. If anything, this post makes me realize that AGI is a bit like Schrödinger’s cat: simultaneously right around the corner, decades away, and possibly imaginary. Still, it’s great to see you lay out these different viewpoints without brushing off the real technical unknowns. Looking forward to future posts—maybe one day with a special guest comment from the first AGI itself (hopefully with better jokes than I can provide)!
Appreciate it! AGI really is Schrodinger’s cat: soon, far, or maybe never. And maybe that’s the real AGI test - can it be funnier than us?
This is an exciting collection of perspectives on AGI! It's fascinating to see how diverse the definitions, viewpoints, and predictions are. The gap between human-level AI and AGI is vast, but the potential impact of AGI, whether seen as a groundbreaking technological leap or a dangerous force, is undeniable. It’ll be interesting to see which of these predictions hold true and how the conversation evolves as we get closer to the reality of AGI.
Exactly. Only time will tell
kinda love seeing all the different takes on where agi’s headed - honestly makes me question if anyone really has a clue yet, you ever feel like it’s all just people guessing at this point?
Yeah, honestly feels like everyone’s just guessing