computer screen displaying the photographs of Elon Musk and Sam Altman in Ankara, Turkiye on March 14, 2024. in history. But when everybody is doing “AI,” tech leaders must come up with a new brand, both more exciting and ominous, to stay above the din. Declaring that “Artificial General Intelligence” or AGI is just around the corner and that their company is at the forefront of the race to get there, attracts scarce AI talent and the attention of investors, policy makers and world leaders.
Coinbase Revealed To Be Backing BlackRock s 5 Trillion By 2030 Crypto Game Changer After Bitcoin Ethereum And XRP Price PumpA major driver of “AGI washing” is the fierce competition for scarce AI talent. How do you attract people that can command up to ato be straightforward about it: “We need to build for general intelligence… I think that’s important to convey because a lot of the best researchers want to work on the more ambitious problems.
Last but not least reason to promote AGI is attention. Not the algorithmic attention of “Attention is All You Need,” the seminal paper that launched the generative AI race, but the attention that people like Musk and Altman and even lesser luminaries or would-be celebrities, need.
But why are Altman and all other promoters of AGI so interested in spreading fake news about the imminent destruction of humanity, you may ask, aren’t they asking for government regulation? Yes, they do. Tech leaders know well that government regulation favors the incumbents and would surely deter and slowdown emerging competition, including from those insisting on open-sourcing their AI models .