I think AGI is better defined as a collective institution that can match the cognitive versatility of a well-educated adult, or of the institutions we already have. The capability doesn't sit in the model. It emerges from the institutional stack the model lives in.
How the word moved
I came to this in December 2025, in the third part of my AI Bubble series, once I'd stopped treating AGI as a lab milestone. If intelligence is institutional, the interesting question changes. It's about which intelligent institutions we want and how we'd build them.
In my words
"AGI is a collective institution that can match or exceed the cognitive versatility and proficiency of a well-educated adult, or of existing institutions composed ..."
from Bhumics. Weekly Planet #15: The AI Bubble, Part 3. AGI After Cognitive Capitalism, 1 Dec 2025
"What intelligent institutions do we want and how do we build them?"
from Bhumics. Weekly Planet #15: The AI Bubble, Part 3. AGI After Cognitive Capitalism, 1 Dec 2025
Related
- Related Augmented Intelligence - what institutions do when they use computation to extend their own cognition.
- Related Cognitive Capitalism - the economy inside which AGI turns into a frontier myth.
- Related General Predictive and Productive Intelligence - the two pathways I lay out in the same essay.