artificial general intelligence

also referred to as: agi

37 statements across 21 episodes · 22 bullish · 5 bearish · 19 people on the record · first statement Jun 28, 2017 by Murray Shanahan · across every show →

Everything said about artificial general intelligence, oldest first

Jun 28, 2017 negative
Disclosure
Shanahan abandoned classical AI in 2000 over lack of AGI progress
“By kind of the turn of the millennium, I'd more or less abandoned classical AI because I didn't think it was moving, moving towards what we now call AGI, artificial general intelligence, the big vision of human level AI.”
Murray Shanahan Jun 28, 2017 ▶ 4:06 Ex Machina's Scientific Advisor - Murray Shanahan · Y Combinator
Apr 25, 2018 positive
Insight
Brundage: AGI accountability may be easier than thought if corrigibility stabilizes feedback
“Corrigibility, what he calls corrigibility, and what others have called corrigibility, might actually be, like, a stable basin of attraction, in the sense that if a system, you know is designed in such a way that it's able to, like, take critical feedback, and…”
Miles Brundage Apr 25, 2018 ▶ 39:55 A.I. Policy and Public Perception - Miles Brundage and Tim Hwang · Y Combinator
Nov 8, 2018 positive
Insight
Altman: Research strategy should back intuition, then double down on what works
“Like, try lots of things, let people follow their intuitions, and then when something starts working, put a lot more resources behind it. That's worked for us really well.”
Sam Altman Nov 8, 2018 ▶ 15:38 Sam Altman on Choosing Projects, Creating Value, and Finding Purpose · Y Combinator
Nov 8, 2018 bullish
Opinion
Altman: Building AGI at OpenAI outweighs all past human innovation combined
“If this one thing works, like, if we do actually build AGI at OpenAI, that is more important than all of the innovation sum total in humanity so far. So, clearly not has all the innovation happened.”
Sam Altman Nov 8, 2018 ▶ 22:13 Sam Altman on Choosing Projects, Creating Value, and Finding Purpose · Y Combinator
Feb 28, 2023 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Habib: Software engineers will be among the first jobs automated by AGI
“When we do get towards things that look like AGI, I suspect that developers will actually be one of the first jobs to see large fractions of their job be automated, which I think is very counterintuitive but also predicting the future is hard, so.”
Raza Habib Feb 28, 2023 ▶ 11:19 The REAL potential of generative AI · Y Combinator
Nov 1, 2024 bullish
Opinion
Tan: AGI is effectively already here for most knowledge worker tasks
“Like you could make a strong case that AGI is basically already here. The majority of the tasks that, you know, 98% of knowledge workers do day-to-day it is now possible for a software engineer probably sitting in front of cursor, to write something that gets …”
Garry Tan Nov 1, 2024 ▶ 3:54 The 10 Trillion Parameter AI Model With 300 IQ · Y Combinator
Nov 8, 2024 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Altman: OpenAI openly targeted AGI when the field considered it taboo
“We said from the very beginning we were going to go after AGI at a time when in the field you weren't allowed to say that because that just seemed impossibly crazy and, you know, borderline irresponsible to talk about.”
Sam Altman Nov 8, 2024 ▶ 13:45 How To Build The Future: Sam Altman · Y Combinator
Nov 8, 2024 bullish
Disclosure
Altman: OpenAI now knows the path to building AGI
“This is the first time ever where I felt like we actually know what to do. Like, I think from here to Building an AGI will still take a huge amount of work. There are some known unknowns, but I think we basically know what to go do, and it'll take a while.”
Sam Altman Nov 8, 2024 ▶ 38:46 How To Build The Future: Sam Altman · Y Combinator
Nov 8, 2024 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Altman: AI will reach Level 3 autonomous agents faster than expected
“Three is agents ability to go off and do these longer-term tasks You know, maybe like multiple interactions with an environment, asking people for help when they need it, working together, all of that. And I think we're gonna get there faster than people expec…”
Sam Altman Nov 8, 2024 ▶ 42:46 How To Build The Future: Sam Altman · Y Combinator
Nov 14, 2024 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Friedman: Altman founded OpenAI believing AGI would accelerate all scientific progress
“I remember back when he was starting open AI, one of the things that really motivated him to do it was he believed that when we actually had AGI basically be better at doing science than humans were, and therefore would accelerate the rate of all scientific pr…”
Jared Friedman Nov 14, 2024 ▶ 2:50 Why The Next AI Breakthroughs Will Be In Reasoning, Not Scaling · Y Combinator
Nov 14, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Gary Tan: Sam Altman directly estimated AGI is 4 to 15 years away
“Seeing him on Monday, he actually directly estimated, you know, between four and 15 years.”
Garry Tan Nov 14, 2024 ▶ 1:26 Why The Next AI Breakthroughs Will Be In Reasoning, Not Scaling · Y Combinator
Jan 31, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McGrew: LLMs have entered a pure scaling regime toward AGI
“And now that that has been cracked at this point, I think we actually have a very clear path to just focus on scaling. You know, we were, you know, talking about that you know, the zero to one part, that's not about scaling. I think there's a really strong cas…”
Bob McGrew Jan 31, 2025 ▶ 13:20 Bob McGrew: AI Agents And The Path To AGI · Y Combinator
Feb 21, 2025
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ilya Sutskever defined AGI as unsupervised learning containing reinforcement learning
“And then he told me the only thing that matters is he drew two circles. One big circle, called it unsupervised learning, and then inside he said, reinforcement learning, another circle, and he said, this is AGI, every other research doesn't matter.”
Aravind Srinivas Feb 21, 2025 ▶ 1:23 How To Build The Future: Aravind Srinivas · Y Combinator
Jul 1, 2025 positive
Opinion
Fei-Fei Li: AGI will not be complete without spatial intelligence
“To me, AGI will not be complete. Without spatial intelligence.”
Dr. Fei-Fei Li Jul 1, 2025 ▶ 16:55 Fei-Fei Li: Spatial Intelligence is the Next Frontier in AI · Y Combinator
Jul 1, 2025 neutral
Insight
Fei-Fei Li: Modern AGI fundamentally mirrors the original 1950s AI goal
“The founding fathers of AI who came together in 1956 in Dartmouth, you know, the John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky of them, they wanted to solve the problem of machines that can think, and that's a problem that Turing, Alan Turing, also put forward a few years e…”
Dr. Fei-Fei Li Jul 1, 2025 ▶ 35:33 Fei-Fei Li: Spatial Intelligence is the Next Frontier in AI · Y Combinator
Jul 8, 2025
Insight
Taggar: The 'Last Window to Get Rich' Logic Is Flawed Under AGI
“If this is actually the last window to make money and get rich, then you're basically implying that, you know, that we're going to get some definition of AGI or ASI, or whatever you want to call it. That's like a necessary condition for that to be true. Like, …”
Harj Taggar Jul 8, 2025 ▶ 7:15 How to Spend Your 20s in the AI Era · Y Combinator
Jul 10, 2025 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ng: AGI is overhyped; humans will outperform AI for a long time
“I feel like AGI has been overhyped. And so for a long time, there'll be a lot of things that humans can do that AI cannot.”
Andrew Ng Jul 10, 2025 ▶ 26:58 Andrew Ng: Building Faster with AI · Y Combinator
Jul 29, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Kaplan: AI scaling curves point smoothly toward human-level AGI
“I think that scaling Really suggests a kind of smooth curve towards what I expect is kind of human level AI or AGI.”
Jared Kaplan Jul 29, 2025 ▶ 17:31 Scaling and the Road to Human-Level AI | Anthropic Co-founder Jared Kaplan · Y Combinator
Sep 30, 2025 negative
Insight
Nick Joseph: Solving coding interview questions proved to be shockingly narrow, not AGI
“I used to think that if you had an AI that could solve coding interview questions, it would probably be AGI. I was like, that's what I did to get my job, I could probably do the job. And it turns out like, nope, nope, you solve those, it's shockingly narrow, a…”
Nick Joseph Sep 30, 2025 ▶ 37:52 Anthropic Head of Pretraining on Scaling Laws, Compute, and the Future of AI · Y Combinator
Sep 30, 2025
Insight
Joseph: Technical AI steerability must precede debates over whose values to embed
“I think that's a really hard problem. I think it's, like, actually kind of downstream of being able to pick any. I think of it almost, I think one analogy I've heard that I like is, like, putting a steering wheel on a car. It's like, if you don't have a steeri…”
Nick Joseph Sep 30, 2025 ▶ 43:48 Anthropic Head of Pretraining on Scaling Laws, Compute, and the Future of AI · Y Combinator
Sep 30, 2025
Insight
Joseph: Sci-fi underestimates AGI because AI software can be copied a billion times
“Sci-fi movies actually, like, underestimate the impact of it. Like, you always have this, like, one robot that's, like, a human. And I'm like, well, wouldn't you have, like, a billion of them? Like, you can just copy them everywhere. So you should picture, lik…”
Nick Joseph Sep 30, 2025 ▶ 41:35 Anthropic Head of Pretraining on Scaling Laws, Compute, and the Future of AI · Y Combinator
Oct 7, 2025 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Fisher: Post-AGI capital won't need labor buy-in, worsening wealth concentration
“But once AGI arrives, you don't need labor buy-in anymore. Right. Like you don't need folks like me to approve of the thing that you're building or of your morals or whatever. Right. Like capital begets capital in that world. And that can easily spiral out of …”
Jordan Fisher Oct 7, 2025 ▶ 34:24 Ask These Questions Before Starting An AI Startup · Y Combinator
Oct 7, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Fisher: AGI is extremely likely to arrive within two to three years
“Cause it's extremely likely that we will have AGI in the next few years. Maybe it's not two, maybe it's three.”
Jordan Fisher Oct 7, 2025 ▶ 3:48 Ask These Questions Before Starting An AI Startup · Y Combinator
Oct 7, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Fisher: Enterprise buyers will adopt AGI agents within a few years
“And I think that's actually extremely nearsighted because what's going to happen, I think open question is the buy side, the enterprises, they're going to get armed with AGI or strong agents over the next couple of years as well.”
Jordan Fisher Oct 7, 2025 ▶ 4:46 Ask These Questions Before Starting An AI Startup · Y Combinator
Feb 6, 2026 positive
Opinion
French-Owen: OpenAI targets long-horizon autonomous intelligence for AGI
“Whereas OpenAI really leans into this idea of just, like, we are going to train the best model and reinforce over time and get it to do longer and longer horizon things in this pursuit of artificial general intelligence.”
Calvin French-Owen Feb 6, 2026 ▶ 18:54 We're All Addicted To Claude Code · Y Combinator
Feb 17, 2026 bullish
Disclosure
Anthropic's path to safe AGI centers on coding and tool use
“You know, as Anthropic, I think for Ant, the bet has been coding For a long time. And the bet has been the path to save, to safe AGI is through coding. And this is, this has kind of always been the idea. And the way you get there is you teach the model how to …”
Boris Cherny Feb 17, 2026 ▶ 2:51 Inside Claude Code With Its Creator Boris Cherny · Y Combinator
Feb 21, 2026 bullish
Opinion
Tan: Artificial general intelligence is literally actually here
“So, you know, there's sort of this explosion in model capability. You know, we've been talking about this for several years, but then it feels like it's here. Like AGI is literally actually here.”
Garry Tan Feb 21, 2026 ▶ 1:14 The AI Agent Economy Is Here · Y Combinator
Feb 27, 2026 bullish
Insight
Fischer predicts Poetiq and base model S-curves will compound toward AGI
“Effectively you could say, like, each model or each set of models that we're working with will have their own S-curve. The poetic system, the poetic meta system itself, is also going to have its own S-curve. And so as the poetic meta system gets better, and as…”
Ian Fisher Feb 27, 2026 ▶ 10:56 The Powerful Alternative To Fine-Tuning · Y Combinator
Mar 27, 2026 neutral
Insight
Chollet: Human-Engineered Agent Harnesses Prove AI Is Far From AGI
“I mean, to me, the fact that you need humans to engineer these harnesses is also a sign that we're short of AGI today, because if we had AGI, you know, AGI would just make its own harness. It would not need to be told how to solve a problem.”
François Chollet Mar 27, 2026 ▶ 25:24 François Chollet: Why Scaling Alone Isn’t Enough for AGI · Y Combinator
Mar 27, 2026 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe Mar 2031
Chollet: AGI Codebase Will Be Under 10,000 Lines on 1980s Compute
“I do believe that, you know, when you create a GI retrospectively, it will turn out that it's a code base that's less than 10,000 lines of code. And that if you had known about it back in the 19 eighties, you could have done a GI back then using the computer r…”
François Chollet Mar 27, 2026 ▶ 36:09 François Chollet: Why Scaling Alone Isn’t Enough for AGI · Y Combinator
Mar 27, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Chollet: Artificial General Intelligence Will Likely Arrive Around ARC-6 or ARC-7
“My timeline to AGI, you know, if you just try to extrapolate from the current rate of progress and the amount of investment that's going into, not just the LLM stack, but also like side ideas, side bets that might work out, like, you know, India, for instance,…”
François Chollet Mar 27, 2026 ▶ 45:50 François Chollet: Why Scaling Alone Isn’t Enough for AGI · Y Combinator
Mar 27, 2026
Insight
Chollet: General Intelligence Is Human-Level Skill Acquisition Efficiency
“General intelligence is human level. Skill acquisition efficiency on the same scope of tasks that humans could potentially learn to do.”
François Chollet Mar 27, 2026 ▶ 10:42 François Chollet: Why Scaling Alone Isn’t Enough for AGI · Y Combinator
Apr 29, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hassabis: Current AI paradigms will be part of final AGI architecture
“The components that you just mentioned, I'm pretty sure will be part of the final architecture for AGI. So I think they've come such a long way now and we've proven out so many things about what they can do. I can't see a world in which we will sort of realize…”
Demis Hassabis Apr 29, 2026 ▶ 2:22 Demis Hassabis: Agents, AGI & The Next Big Scientific Breakthrough · Y Combinator
Apr 29, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hassabis predicts AGI will arrive around 2030
“Depending on what your AGI timeline is, You know, mine's like, 20, 30 or something like this.”
Demis Hassabis Apr 29, 2026 ▶ 39:14 Demis Hassabis: Agents, AGI & The Next Big Scientific Breakthrough · Y Combinator
Apr 29, 2026 neutral
Insight
Hassabis: Continual learning, reasoning, and memory are required for AGI
“Continual learning, Long-term reasoning. Some aspects of memory. These are still unsolved. And how to get the systems to be more consistent across the board. I think all of these are going to be required for AGI.”
Demis Hassabis Apr 29, 2026 ▶ 2:49 Demis Hassabis: Agents, AGI & The Next Big Scientific Breakthrough · Y Combinator
Apr 29, 2026 positive
Insight
Hassabis: Active agent systems are the necessary path to AGI
“You have to have an active system that can actively solve problems for you to get to AGI. That was always clear to us. So agents are that path.”
Demis Hassabis Apr 29, 2026 ▶ 15:43 Demis Hassabis: Agents, AGI & The Next Big Scientific Breakthrough · Y Combinator
Apr 29, 2026 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hassabis: 50% chance AGI requires one or two new big ideas
“It could be that there's still one or two big ideas left that need to be cracked. I don't think it's more than one or two, if there are out there. And I think You know, my betting is about fifty-fifty if that's the case.”
Demis Hassabis Apr 29, 2026 ▶ 3:12 Demis Hassabis: Agents, AGI & The Next Big Scientific Breakthrough · Y Combinator
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 300 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.