AGI is not possible even in 10 years
58 comments
·November 27, 2025charlie-83
lagniappe
When you see these claims it's important to frame the assertion contextually as in the transformer generation, AGI is 10+ years away. This does not, however, account for the next architecture that will do more with less.
FiberBundle
This is inconsistent with people like Hassabis or Sutskever giving time frames while also saying that LLMs won't get us to AGI.
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this_user
The people most qualified to make an educated guess simultaneously have a direct financial incentive to claim that it is in reach within a few years. The only one who doesn't seem to care all that much is Le Cun.
ACCount37
He's under a direct financial incentive to claim otherwise.
If AGI is reachable in 5 years with today's architectures, then why would anyone fund his pet research in novel AI architectures?
benterix
To have an alternative? So far the work on transformers was done in a large part in the open (except OpenAI which tried to be as closed as possible). There is zero guarantee that whoever discovers the path to AGI decides to publish the paper etc. It's just one of many reasons (a less important one IMO) why research into novel AI approaches is valuable for humanity.
okaleniuk
The most interesting thing in this whole picture is not AGI, it's how the collective intelligence works. CEOs claim the AGI is near because that's how they manipulate the public. But the public knows that it's only a manipulation. So how come the manipulation is still possible?
Avicebron
Sunk cost fallacy? What percentage of the public has actually invested the billions/trillions and is now demanding something to show for it? I'm not sure the average joe wants copilot in their outlook, but sure as hell someone wants it in there
blkhawk
because people hedge their bets almost always. basically how likely something is vs costs vs what everybody else is doing vs how you are personally affected.
So in case of the current AI there are several scenarios where you have to react to it. For example as a CEO of a company that would benefit from AI you need to demonstrate you are doing something or you get attacked for not doing enough.
As a CEO of an AI producing company you have almost no idea if the stuff you working on will be the thing that say makes hallucination-free LLMs, allows for cheap long term context integration or even "solve AGI". you have to pretend that you are just about to do the latter tho.
kubb
Bots and paid trolls online pushing a narrative.
With a whole manual of rhetorical tactics.
AnimalMuppet
Because "the public" isn't one person or even one cohesive group. Some see the manipulation, and point it out. Others don't see it, or ignore it when it's pointed out.
And why ignore it? Because they don't want to believe it's manipulation, because it promises large numbers of dollars, and they want to believe that those are real.
BLKNSLVR
We don't even have an agreed measure for it, that's how far away we are.
Is there an RFC being developed for AGI?
jagrsw
It's not possible even in 10 years (.. but maybe in 11).
What a shift in the last 5 years (never -> 100 years -> 11)
ACCount37
ChatGPT has done too many things that "a computer can't do". The "AI effect" denial is strong, but it has its limits.
danslo
This is slop right?
>This isn’t a minor gap; it’s a fundamental limitation.
>His timeline? At least a decade, probably much longer.
>What does that mean? Simply throwing more computing power and data at current models isn’t working anymore.
>His timeline for truly useful agents? About ten years.
dude250711
You can tell by the post history.
It's just like with the fake StackOverflow reputation and fake CodeProject articles in the past.
Same people at it again but super-charged.
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kypro
It seems to me by most classical definitions we've basically already reached AGI.
If I were to show Gemini 3 Pro to anyone in tech 10 years ago they would probably say Gemini 3 is an AGI, even if they acknowledged there was some limitations there.
The definition has moved so much that I'm not convinced that even if we see further breakthroughs over the next 10 years people will say we've finally reached AGI because even at that point it's probable there might still be 0.5% of tasks it struggles to compete with humans on. And we're going to have similar endless debates about ASI and the consciousness of AI.
I think all that matters really is utility of AI systems broadly within society. While a self-driving car may not be an AGI, it will displace jobs and fundamentally change society.
The achievement of some technical definition of AGI on the other hand is probably not all that relevant. Even if goal posts stop moving from today and advancements are made such that we finally get 51% of experts agreeing that AGI has been reached there could still be 49% of expert who argue that it hasn't. On the other hand, one will be confused about whether their job has been replaced by an AI system.
I'm sorry - I know this is a bit of a meta comment. I do broadly agree with the article. I just struggle to see why anyone cares unless hitting that 51/49% threshold in opinion on AGI correlates to something tangible.
weatherlite
Ah great more "when will we hit AGI" speculation, lets keep them coming. Some say 2 years, some say 5, some say never.
diego_moita
I think the best take in AGI is Edsger Dijkstra's:
“The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.”
grumbelbart2
I've read this multiple times and disagree.
If I had an AGI that designs me a safe, small and cheap fusion reactor, of course I would be interested in that.
My intelligence is intrinsically limited by my biology. The only way to really scale it up is to wire stuff into my brain, and I'd prefer an AGI over that every day.
quantum_state
Well said!
arisAlexis
According to Clarke's First Law, "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
sublinear
> The architecture might just be wrong for AGI. LeCun’s been saying this for years: LLMs trained on text prediction are fundamentally limited. They’re mimicking human output without human experience.
Yes, and most with a background in linguistics or computer science have been saying the same since the inception of their disciplines. Grammars are sets of rules on symbols and any form of encoding is very restrictive. We haven't come up with anything better yet.
The tunnel vision on this topic is so strong that many don't even question language itself first. If we were truly approaching AGI anytime soon, wouldn't there be clearer milestones beforehand? Why must I peck this message out, and why must you scan it with your eyes only for it to become something else entirely once consumed? How is it that I had this message entirely crystalized instantly in my mind, yet it took me several minutes of deliberate attention to serialize it into this form?
Clearly, we have an efficiency problem to attack first.
hackinthebochs
>Yes, and most with a background in linguistics or computer science have been saying the same since the inception of their disciplines
I'm not sure what authority linguists are supposed to have here. They have gotten approximately nowhere in the last 50 years. "Every time I fire a linguist, the performance of the speech recognizer goes up".
>Grammars are sets of rules on symbols and any form of encoding is very restrictive
But these rules can be arbitrarily complex. Hand-coded rules have a pretty severe complexity bounds. But LLMs show these are not in principle limitations. I'm not saying theory has nothing to add, but perhaps we should consider the track record when placing our bets.
sublinear
I'm very confused by your comment, but appreciate that you have precisely made my point. There are no "bets" with regard to these topics. How do you think a computer works? Do you seriously believe LLMs somehow escape the limitations of the machines they run on?
ACCount37
And what are the limitations of the machines they run on?
We're yet to find any process at all that can't be computed with a Turing machine.
Why do you expect that "intelligence" is a sudden outlier? Do you have an actual reason to expect that?
hackinthebochs
What do you think these in principle limitations are that preclude a computer running the right program from reaching general intelligence?
ACCount37
Why would language restrict LLMs?
"Language" is an input/output interface. It doesn't define the internals that produce those inputs and outputs. And between those inputs and outputs sits a massive computational process that doesn't operate on symbols or words internally.
And, what "clearer milestones" do you want exactly?
To me, LLMs crushing NLU and CSR was the milestone. It was the "oh fuck" moment, the clear signal that old bets are off and AGI timelines are now compressed.
rvz
"AGI" was hijacked to mean something else and was turned into a scam.
What it "really means" is more mass layoffs to power AI infrastructure for that to power so-called "AI agents" to achieve a 10% increase in global unemployment in the next 5 years.
From the "benefit of humanity", then to the entire destruction of knowledge workers and now to the tax payer even if it costs another $10T to bailout the industry from staggeringly giant costs to run all of it.
Once again, AGI is now nothing but a grift. The crash will be a spectacle for the ages.
incomingpain
AGI has already happened.
Grok4 and Gemini 3 Pro top models are around the 125-130IQ range. They are rapidly moving towards ASI.
BLKNSLVR
Can they please do my laundry then?
incomingpain
Doing your laundry is a sign of general intelligence? If someone is a quadriplegic and cant do their own laundry, does that mean they arent intelligent?
BLKNSLVR
My point is that your example is a one trick pony. An impressive and useful one trick pony, granted.
AGI is currently undefined, so any argument about it is meaningless, unless it's in aid of developing a definition.
An AI that knows how to do laundry, but is unable to perform said task is useless without the ability. But is it AGI with just the knowledge?
It feels like any time scale on AGI is basically just made up. Since no one has any idea of how to get there, how could you possibly estimate how long it will take? We could stumble on some secret technique that unlocks AGI tomorrow or it could be literally impossible. You might as well ask how long until humans can cast magic spells.