AGI
Also known as: artificial general intelligence, general AI, strong AI, human-level AI
The term floats around AI discourse so constantly that it's easy to assume everyone means the same thing. They don't. AGI is loosely defined as an AI that can learn, reason, and act across any domain the way a capable human could: it isn't locked to one task, it can pick up new skills, and it transfers what it knows from one context to another. Current models, no matter how impressive, are still specialist systems trained on specific distributions of data.
The debate about whether we've reached AGI, or are close to it, is partly definitional. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in late 2025 that AGI had essentially 'gone whooshing by' with less disruption than expected. Critics point out that models still fail in predictable and embarrassing ways on simple novel tasks. Most researchers say there's no agreed-upon test that proves AGI has arrived.
Why it matters for builders: many product decisions rest on assumptions about how much broader AI capabilities will get. If models keep improving, a task that requires human judgment today may be automatable next year. Understanding where the AGI debate sits helps calibrate how much to bet on AI handling open-ended problems versus narrow, well-scoped ones.