OpenAI's AGI Eras Tour
It’s a question as old as time. Or at least as old as Terminator 2. Is AGI here? With the launch today of 'GPT-6 Astra', yes, says OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman.
Well, yes-ish. As Frederic Lardinois reports for The New Stack:
During a press briefing ahead of the launch, OpenAI President Greg Brockman took things a bit further than the benchmarks, though. After acknowledging that AGI remains a “gray, fuzzy thing,” he suggested future observers might look back at Astra as the model that marked its arrival.“I think it’s not unreasonable to feel that we are now in the AGI era,” Brockman said. Asked whether OpenAI was formally declaring that it had achieved AGI, he said the term was no longer tied to a contractual trigger(referring to its earlier agreement with Microsoft) and described it instead as a “mission concept or spiritual concept.” He closed the briefing with: “Welcome to the AGI era.”
It's settled then. We can all agree that no one could ever agree on an actual definition of "AGI" – not even Microsoft and OpenAI despite it insanely being a key contractual agreement – so Brockman is essentially calling it what it has become: a marketing term. And so what's the downside in using it to your marketing advantage? Absolutely nothing!
So we're here, baby. The singularity. AGI. CGI. CSI: Miami. It's all happening.
Honestly, it's a bit disappointing to see OpenAI be so flippant here. Yes, the term was way too loaded, but that was in no small part OpenAI's own fault over the past many years – including, yes, due to 'The Clause' with Microsoft. Declaring it now to the press alongside the release of a new model, even if you try to couch your comments, makes it seem like the whole world is going to change overnight. Every headline is going to be that quote. "Welcome to the AGI era."
And the reality is that nothing is going to change overnight. And such proclamations are not going to help the growing AI backlash! AGI is here and my computer still can't automatically get my mom home from the airport?
That's not to say all the progress in AI isn't amazing – it is! – but this declaration undercuts the actual work here. Back to Lardinois:
According to OpenAI’s Aidan Clark. Astra was OpenAI’s largest training run to date. “It’s the first time we’ve pre-trained on more than 100,000 GPUs at our Stargate site in Texas,” he said. Clark also noted that Astra is the first OpenAI model release where earlier models played a significant role in supervising the training process.
Yes, that's a reference to the other mythical acronym here: RSI. If that work keeps up and accelerates, it's arguably far more important than an AGI declaration. That could be actual AI takeoff. Which is equal parts exciting and terrifying.
Anyway, it's interesting that both Brockman and Sam Altman are trying to frame this moment in hindsight already. That we'll look back upon today and think this is the moment when AGI was here. Maybe, but honestly probably not. Because as good as Astra may be, it's not clear that there will be some sort of singular moment in time where everything changed with AI. That sounds like something that happens in movies.
