AGI
Etymology
From "artificial intelligence" plus "general," stressing breadth across domains rather than a single skill. The term was popularized in the early 2000s by researchers including Ben Goertzel and Shane Legg, partly to distinguish the original grand ambition from the narrow AI that actually works today. There is no agreed definition or test — flag it as genuinely contested.
noun · /ay-jee-EYE/
Artificial general intelligence: hypothetical AI that matches or exceeds human ability across virtually all cognitive tasks.
What it names
The long-horizon goal (and fear) driving much AI investment and debate, marking the leap from narrow tools to broadly capable minds.
Example
Today’s models are narrow specialists; whether scaling them ever produces AGI is fiercely debated.
Related idea
A far broader ambition than a large language model, which is powerful but narrow; AGI would generalize across essentially all tasks rather than excel at one.