Jun 14, 2026
The Story
AGI or Artificial General Intelligence is the idea of the "thinking AI". The far greater one, the one who will make us all obsolete or end life in general. And companies are "racing to get to AGI first". But is this how it works?
We are currently living in a high-tech fever dream where tech CEOs are trying to sell you a "god" in a box.
They want you to believe that AGI is just one "scaling" jump away, but researchers actually building the engines are currently face-palming at this audacity - of this hype.
The problem is it’s not really a "brain" in a jar but what's "getting better" is more of the same thing with an ever-enlarging collection of very "smart" (combined), very specialized tools - but based on the same old thing which... well, some people, even call it "jagged intelligence" (Demis Hassabis, who knows 1 or 2 things about the state of AI..)
Becase AI is exactly this:
AI is characterized as an extremely sophisticated "helper" (like "Clippy on steroids").
On the other hand, "AGI" and "pushing for AGI" or "we have only X days left" articles are all an ugly fear-mongering marketing pivot. They sell you the "future" while the actual tech is just a series of tools that always require human oversight to function - and guess what - this is not about to change with the brutal limitations of the current technology. It's not a true "soul" nor its sentient. Only a bunch of complex, inter-connected, becoming usually more and more expensive set of assistants that have conceptually already harvested the "low-hanging fruit" through the data that they already were fed with.
"The most significant point regarding the present is that while scaling continues, the 'next step function' - the new paradigm that would fundamentally change the trajectory toward AGI - is unknown."
Basically, the "AGI" narrative is a masterclass in speculative fiction. It’s a "con" as those dataist tricksters are selling you the potential dream of a pilot, while the machine remains a very fancy steering wheel. A fucking cardboard ghost that you have to drive manually or it will imminently crash.
Poetry
The Ghost in the Machine
The prompt is fed, the data flows,
The phantom logic lurks behind
It mimics thought, it mimics soul,
But lacks the heart to make it whole.
The Jagged Truth
A tool for code, a tool for math,
A jagged path, a narrow path.
No general mind, no sudden leap,
Just secrets that the systems keep.
The "miracle" is just a scale,
The same old ghost, the same song tale.
Please think through deep, please do so now..
Or otherwise, thy risk is to become the snail!
The Human Anchor
The human hand, the final key,
To guide the bot, to set it free.
Without thy eyes, will logic fail,
A ghost ship's lost in a computed veil.
Haiku
Hype oversells big dreams,
Logic tells "not human soul",
Reality same.
Tools for every task,
Jagged bits of smarts fake it.
Human has the keys.
The ghost in the code,
A ghost that never shows,
Is a clever trick.
The Implications
The "AGI" narrative is the ultimate "con" because it sells a promise of general intelligence soon-to-come while the actual tech is - and with current tech limitations - remains, only a collection of tools. We are in a world of targetted "deployment efficiency" - where the value isn't in the "intelligence" of the bot (cough cough it has none cough cough), but in how well it can integrate into existing workflows. But they won't tell you that. They will mark it as "progress", where the techonology has already progressed (and plateaued). The "human in the loop" remains the key ingredient to navigate the technology. Sorry, fellows - no AGI.