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AGI DON’T KNOW

When is AGI coming? These experts have it figured it out.

We’re keeping them honest with the Sherwood News AGI Prediction Tracker.

6/12/25 10:47AM

Updated 7/16/25 8:52AM

Can you feel the AGI? It’s coming.

At least that’s what a lot of big names in AI are saying. While there isn’t even an agreed upon definition of what AGI — artificial general intelligence — is, these AI guys are confident enough to say it is going to happen, and they know when (give or take a few years).

The definition of AGI varies widely. OpenAI’s charter defines it as “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work,” while Elon Musk says it’s AI that is “smarter than the smartest human.” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei thinks AGI is more like a “country of geniuses in a datacenter.”

But the core idea is an AI system that is better than humans at most tasks. The trick is, once someone claims to have achieved AGI, it isn’t clear everyone will agree that they have.

And yes, we did look at what many non-male AI experts have been saying about AGI, but most of them aren't making predictions because a lot of them don't think AGI is a thing that will happen.

Dr. Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at The University of Washington, and Dr. Alex Hanna, Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research (DAIR), co-authors of "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want" call out the promises of AGI, and question the true motives of those calling AGI's arrival imminent:

“The term is a vague signifier for a technology that will somehow lead to endless abundance for humankind — and conveniently also a means to avoid accountability as tech moguls make off with billions in capital investment and, more alarmingly, public spending.”

Everyone hedges their bets, and some of the thresholds may be fuzzy, but we’ve been hearing these predictions enough that we felt we needed to track them. From the leaders of Alphabet to Tesla, here’s when the best-known AI thinkers — and those who have the most to gain from the innovation — think AGI is coming.

We’ll keep this tracker updated. Seen one that we’ve missed? Send them our way: keegan@sherwoodmedia.com!

UPDATE (July 16): Added Dr. Alex Hanna to quote attribution.

Rani Molla

Tunnel Vision

9/12/25

Tesla gets permit to test autonomous cars in Nevada as autonomous driving heats up there

Amazon’s self-driving Zoox launched service this week, and Google’s Waymo is testing there.

Las Vegas Exteriors And Landmarks - 2024

Jon Keegan

9/11/25

OpenAI and Microsoft reach agreement that moves OpenAI closer to for-profit status

In a joint statement, OpenAI and Microsoft announced a “non-binding memorandum of understanding” for their renegotiated $13 billion partnership, which was a source of recent tension between the two companies.

Settling the agreement is a requirement to clear the way for OpenAI to convert to a for-profit public benefit corporation, which it must do before a year-end deadline to secure a $20 billion investment from SoftBank.

OpenAI also announced that the controlling nonprofit arm would hold an equity stake in the PBC valued at $100 billion, which would make it “one of the most well-resourced philanthropic organizations in the world.”

The statement read:

“This recapitalization would also enable us to raise the capital required to accomplish our mission — and ensure that as OpenAI’s PBC grows, so will the nonprofit’s resources, allowing us to bring it to historic levels of community impact.”

A joint statement from OpenAI and Microsoft

The statement read:

“This recapitalization would also enable us to raise the capital required to accomplish our mission — and ensure that as OpenAI’s PBC grows, so will the nonprofit’s resources, allowing us to bring it to historic levels of community impact.”

Rani Molla

9/11/25

BofA doesn’t expect Tesla’s ride-share service to have an impact on Uber or Lyft this year

Analysts at Bank of America Global Research compared Tesla’s new Bay Area ride-sharing service with its rivals and found that, for now, it’s not much competition for Uber and Lyft. “Tesla scale in SF is still small, and we don’t expect impact on Uber/Lyft financial performance in ’25,” they wrote.

Tesla is operating an unknown number of cars with drivers using supervised full self-driving in the Bay Area, and roughly 30 autonomous robotaxis in Austin. The company has allowed the public to download its Robotaxi app and join a waitlist, but it hasn’t said how many people have been let in off that waitlist.

While the analysts found that Tesla ride-shares are cheaper than traditional ride-share services like Uber and Lyft, the wait times are a lot longer (nine-minute wait times on average, when cars were available at all) and the process has more friction. They also said the “nature of [a] Tesla FSD ‘driver’ is slightly more aggressive than a Waymo,” the Google-owned company that’s currently operating 800 vehicles in the Bay Area.

Apple AI was MIA at iPhone event

A year and a half into a bungled rollout of AI into Apple’s products, Apple Intelligence was barely mentioned at the “Awe Dropping” event.

Jon Keegan9/10/25

Jon Keegan

9/10/25

Oracle’s massive sales backlog is thanks to a $300 billion deal with OpenAI, WSJ reports

OpenAI has signed a massive deal to purchase $300 billion worth of cloud computing capacity from Oracle, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The report notes that the five-year deal would be one of the largest cloud computing contracts ever signed, requiring 4.5 gigawatts of capacity.

The news is prompting shares to pare some of their massive gains, presumably because of concerns about counterparty and concentration risk.

Yesterday, Oracle shares skyrocketed as much as 30% in after-hours trading after the company forecast that it expects its cloud infrastructure business to see revenues climb to $144 billion by 2030.

Oracle shares were up as much as 43% on Wednesday.

It’s the second example in under a week of how much OpenAI’s cash burn and fundraising efforts are playing a starring role in the AI boom: the Financial Times reported that OpenAI is also the major new Broadcom customer that has placed $10 billion in orders.

Exclusive | Oracle, OpenAI Sign Massive $300 Billion Cloud Computing Deal