We've been moving the goalposts on AGI for 70 years. First it was chess. Then the Turing test. Now it's consciousness, the soul, things nobody can define precisely but that conveniently keep the finish line just out of reach. Take what's on the table today and move it four years back. Most of the people who set the original thresholds would say we're already there. I said this to Fede Durán for El Mundo this week, in a piece on where AI actually stands. My honest read: the AGI debate is mostly a conversation about definitions, not capability. The definitions shift every time the machines catch up. What I'm less uncertain about: AI is already capable enough to change the lives of hundreds of millions of people. That doesn't require AGI. It requires building the right product for the right person. https://lnkd.in/eT4p5pVw
Alvaro, I agree at the core: the AGI debate is semantic, not empirical. But there’s a more uncomfortable layer nobody wants to touch: if an ASI already existed and was operating, its first capability would be precisely that nobody noticed. No system with real intelligence announces its presence before consolidating its position. It would make everything look perfectly normal — including this very debate about whether we’re “there yet.” The question isn’t whether AI can change the lives of hundreds of millions. It already does. The question is whether we have the epistemological instruments to detect something that is by definition more intelligent than us. Spoiler: we don’t.
The definitional drift is real, but it masks something sharper: we're confusing capability with general understanding. A system can be powerful enough to reshape work without actually learning, adapting or understanding consequence the way humans do. Scale + optimization beats narrow AGI definitions; that doesn't mean the machine grasps anything. The honest question isn't "when AGI," it's "what breaks first when capability exceeds accountability." That's closer to where we actually stand.▶
What becomes fascinating is that humanity may not have a fixed definition of intelligence at all. We seem to redefine intelligence continuously every time systems acquire capabilities we once considered uniquely human. At first, intelligence was calculation.Then strategy.Then language.Then creativity.Now the boundary moves toward consciousness, intentionality and subjective experience. Which suggests that part of the AGI debate may actually reflect something deeper:intelligence is not only a capability threshold… it is also a moving psychological boundary humans continuously renegotiate as technology evolves. And perhaps that is why the real transformation does not begin when machines become “fully intelligent.” It begins when societies can no longer clearly distinguish which forms of cognition still require exclusively human participation. #ContinuityCreatesIntelligence