Mastering language means we crossed the AGI threshold, argues Arcas
blaiseaguera · x · 2026-09-24
Blaise Agüera y Arcas argues that much of today's discourse conflates generality with superhuman capability: a pocket calculator is superhuman at arithmetic yet narrow, while language models are general even when imperfect. He reiterates the 2023 Noema argument he made with Peter Norvig—that we effectively crossed the general intelligence threshold once models mastered language, because competence at language inherently involves open-ended task generality. He also points to his discussion with George Musser in Scientific American on what "AGI" even means anymore.
Related event: Google's Arcas: Language Mastery Means AGI Is Already Here(2 posts)→
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