The Download: the AGI myth, and US/China AI competition

I hear it's close: two years, five years--maybe next year! And I hear it's going to solve our biggest problems in ways we cannot yet imagine. I also hear it will bring on the apocalypse and kill us all We're of course talking about artificial general intelligence, or AGI--that hypothetical near-future technology that (I hear) will be able to do pretty much whatever a human brain can do. Every age has its believers, people with an unshakeable faith that something huge is about to happen--a before and an after that they are privileged (or doomed) to live through. For us, that's the promised advent of AGI. And here's what I think: AGI is a lot like a conspiracy theory, and it may be the most consequential one of our time.