Update on the race toward AGI (and how it will impact you and your company this year in simple terms)
I’m a bookworm at heart and a huge fan of sci-fi, but I know it’s not everyone’s thing. However, it’s now 2026, and it’s time for all of us to talk* about the sci-fi stuff that will drive global business outcomes in 2026: the international race to Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI.
Even if you don’t yet know what AGI is, you’ve benefitted from it (or rather, the race towards it) if you’re one of the billion or so people who uses AI on a regular basis. Further, you’ll be impacted by it even if you’re not a frequent AI user. That’s because the race toward AGI will be a key driver for the US and global economy for the foreseeable future.
So, here are a few real-world (and sci-fi) AGI definitions and examples:
The company that created ChatGPT (OpenAI) has this definition for AGI in their charter: “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work.” In fact, OpenAI’s charter is all about AGI.
Sci-fi characters that represent AGI in some of my favorite books and movies:
- HAL 9000 from the movie “2001, a Space Odyssey”
- Sonny from the movie “iRobot”
- Ship from the book “Aurora”
- Thoth from the book “Not Till We Are Lost.”
Silicon Valley AI labs are competing with each other or their international rivals to be the first to get to AGI. Some authors (in both sci-fi and AI-development) assert that AGI is so powerful that whoever obtains it first will win the global economic game, basically forever.
Corporate impact:
- The race to AGI drives much of the competition, development, and money movement in the whole AI space right now.
- "The Magnificent 7" are the 7 companies that currently account for about a third of the total value of all stocks in the S&P 500, and at least a few of those 7 companies are largely focused on AGI development these days.
- Further, leaders at many other companies take their cues from the Magnificent 7 in terms of hiring & automation decisions.
- Therefore, the race to AGI is already likely impacting your investments, your retirement funds, and your job one way or another.
AGI creation will be more important and disruptive than any other tech advancement for the following simple reason: It’s an advancement in intelligence itself, and intelligence drives all other types of tech advancement. So when you see a new, more powerful, more alien-seeming AI model released just about every other week throughout the next year, just know that what’s coming down the line is going to be a lot weirder (assuming that the makers of AI get to where they say they are going).
Bonus reading: The next step beyond AGI is ASI, or Artificial Superintelligence. The idea is that if AGI can do everything better than humans, then it would be better than humans at creating AI itself. And so the machine would improve upon itself in a feedback loop leading to intelligence that is not just better than any human, but better than all humans put together.
So ASI would be to humans as humans are to ants. It’s not just sci-fi anymore. Meta (the company that created Facebook) is openly pursuing superintelligence at this moment.
Recommended reading list on next steps in AGI/ASI development: Life 3.0 (Max Tegmark), Superintelligence (Nick Bostrom), AI 2027 (Daniel Kokotajlo et al)
*I chose not to use AI to write this post, just because that would have been a bit too ironic.