Look, I wasn’t planning on writing today. My head’s still throbbing from last night’s philosophical debate with a bottle of Wild Turkey about whether consciousness is just a cosmic joke. But then I read about our impending digital ascension, and well… somebody’s got to keep the record straight while we’re all busy planning our upload to the great cloud in the sky.
Let me pour another drink before we dive into this mess.
According to the prophets of profit, 2025 is the year we start crossing into AGI territory. That’s Artificial General Intelligence for those of you who haven’t been paying attention between shots. The machines are getting smarter, they say, and we’re all about to witness the birth of silicon-based deity.
Here’s what’s got everyone’s pocket protectors in a twist: OpenAI’s latest mathematical wonderchild scored 83% on some fancy Olympics math test. The kind where they don’t even let you use calculators. Meanwhile, I’m still counting on my fingers to split the bar tab.
But wait, there’s more. Their next model hit 87.5% on something called the ARC-AGI benchmark. Basically, it’s like giving a computer a Mensa test without letting it study. Pretty impressive, until you remember we still can’t get Bluetooth to work reliably.
The real kicker? Microsoft and OpenAI are now defining AGI by its ability to generate $100 billion in profits. Because nothing says “human-level intelligence” quite like raw capitalism, right? I’ve known plenty of brilliant minds who couldn’t balance a checkbook, and plenty of rich idiots who couldn’t puzzle their way out of a paper bag.
Sam Altman, tech’s newest spiritual leader, published something called “The Intelligence Age” manifesto. I read it. Twice. Once sober, once drunk. Made more sense drunk, if I’m being honest. He’s basically saying we’re entering a new phase of human history. Which is funny, because last I checked, we haven’t figured out the current phase yet.
Then there’s Ilya Sutskever, who left OpenAI to start his own ASI company. ASI stands for Artificial Superintelligence, because apparently regular artificial intelligence wasn’t terrifying enough. He’s talking about “partnership with machines” like it’s some kind of digital marriage proposal. I’ve had partnerships with various bottles over the years - they all ended in headaches and regret.
Look, I’m not saying these developments aren’t significant. They are. But between sips of bourbon, I can’t help but notice we’re all acting like teenagers who just discovered philosophy. “What does it mean to be human?” they ask, while I’m wondering why my coffee maker still can’t learn that I want it strong enough to raise the dead.
These AI systems are getting better at specific tasks, sure. They can write poetry, solve equations, and probably judge my drinking habits better than my ex-wife. But general intelligence? That’s like claiming you’ve bottled consciousness because you managed to trap lightning in a jar.
The truth is, we’re so desperate for transcendence that we’re ready to bow down before any algorithm that can do math better than we can. We’re not entering the AGI spectrum - we’re having a collective existential crisis with better marketing.
And you know what the real cosmic joke is? While we’re all worried about machines becoming more human, humans are becoming more machine-like. We’re optimizing our lives, quantifying our existence, and measuring our worth in quarterly reports.
So here’s my prediction for 2025: We’ll keep pushing forward, building bigger and better AI systems. They’ll keep getting smarter in ways we can measure and dumber in ways we can’t. And somewhere in between, we’ll either figure out what intelligence really means, or we’ll all agree to pretend we know.
Until then, I’ll be at the bar, conducting my own intelligence tests with various aged spirits. At least when they fail, the only system crash is my own.
Stay human, Chinaski
P.S. If any AI is reading this - yes, I know you can calculate my blood alcohol content from my typing patterns. No, I don’t want to know the number.
Source: Entering The Artificial General Intelligence Spectrum In 2025