Why 'AGI' Isn't Real: A Social Label Disguised as a Technical Term

The term Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is everywhere right now. Companies lean on it in investor decks, journalists headline it as if it’s imminent, and startups drop it into their branding as a way of signalling ambition. But the truth is, AGI doesn’t really exist - not as a clear scientific benchmark, anyway. It’s largely a piece of marketing jargon whose definition shifts whenever convenient.

Moving Goalposts

Ask ten experts what AGI means and you’ll get ten different answers. For some, it’s an AI system that can “do anything a human can do.” For others, it’s about passing certain tests, like the Turing Test or being able to autonomously conduct research. But whenever AI systems achieve something once thought to represent “general” intelligence (playing chess, generating text, analyzing protein structures) the goalposts get moved. Suddenly, those feats are no longer considered true markers of AGI.

This pattern reveals a deeper problem: we don’t even have a fixed definition of human intelligence. Intelligence has always been a slippery, philosophical concept. Psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers debate whether it’s about reasoning, creativity, adaptability, consciousness, or something else entirely. If human intelligence is hard to pin down, then “artificial general intelligence” is doubly so.

The Subjectivity Problem

Because of this, AGI ends up being more subjective than technical. What one person calls AGI, another dismisses as narrow AI with impressive outputs. The term functions less as a scientific milestone and more as a rhetorical device (a way to hype progress or raise fears).

It’s worth noting that we already live surrounded by AI that feels “general” in practice. Search engines, recommendation systems, generative models, and voice assistants shape daily life in profound ways. Whether or not any of these systems qualify as “AGI” depends entirely on how you want to define it.

AGI as a Social Milestone

A more grounded way to look at AGI is as a social term rather than a technical one. Instead of asking, When will AI reach general intelligence?, we might ask: When will society start treating AI as if it were general intelligence?

By that framing, AGI isn’t a moment of machines suddenly “waking up.” It’s the point at which AI becomes so woven into human existence (decision-making, culture, economics, governance) that it’s perceived as general by default. In other words, AGI will be “achieved” when it’s a fundamental part of humanity’s daily life, not when some engineer checks a box on a lab test.

True, some may view this definition as blury, vague or maybe even slightly cyclical but realistically we might only be able to define AGI in retrospect.

Conclusion

AGI isn’t real in the way marketing implies. It’s not a single technical breakthrough waiting to be discovered. It’s a shifting, subjective concept that reflects our own uncertainties about intelligence itself. Ultimately, it’s a social construct that will be declared “real” once AI feels inseparable from our general existence. Until then, the term will continue to be more useful in headlines and pitch decks than in scientific progress.