What is artificial general intelligence (general AI/AGI)?

This article is part of Demystifying AI, a series of posts that (try to) disambiguate the jargon and myths surrounding AI. From ancient mythology to modern science fiction, humans have been dreaming of creating artificial intelligence for millennia. But the endeavor of synthesizing intelligence only began in earnest in the late 1950s, when a dozen scientists gathered in Dartmouth College, NH, for a two-month workshop to create machines that could "use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves." The workshop marked the official beginning of AI history. But as the two-month effort--and many others that followed--only proved that human intelligence is very complicated, and the complexity becomes more evident as you try to replicate it.