The AI Revolution: Why AGI Isn't Necessary for Transformative Change

While there is certainly a lot of hype and exaggerated claims about AI (and it's true that we are still far from AGI) what happens is that AGI is not necessary for this revolution to take place.

Human Intelligence: A Case of Misplaced Value

The task of making a coffee involves a high level of intelligence, but this is because the human brain is optimized for physical tasks.

We often say that doctors or engineers are intelligent, but the truth is that, technically speaking:

It takes more "intelligence fuel" for a child to recognize a dog than for a doctor to know all the bones in the human body.

Since doctors can also recognize a dog easily, we simply place more value on what is rare.

So, the idea that we need a machine better than us in every decision for a revolution is misguided.

It’s enough to surpass humans in specific, high-value tasks, most of which require far less intelligence than making a cup of coffee.

AI's Superiority in High-Value Tasks

Just as AI has already surpassed humans in chess, the same is happening in fields like economics and marketing.

In chess, AI systems make creative decisions that are entirely different from anything humans had ever seen before, often leaving the best human players unable to understand or predict their moves.

Once AI can outperform humans in creative and strategic decision-making in areas like economics and marketing, a powerful transformation—for better or worse—becomes inevitable.

The Exponential Change and Its Inevitability

Like in the movie "Don't Look Up", it’s comfortable for people to fall into denial.

Our brains aren’t well adapted to understanding exponential change.

But when you set aside human emotions and focus on the facts and metrics, it becomes undeniable that we will experience “magic” in just a few thousand days.

If someone had predicted, 3,000 days ago, that we would have machines capable of generating original texts, creating music or symphonies, or producing imaginative images never seen before by any human, those claims would have sounded like fantasy.

And yet, here we are.

We are already experiencing things today that, just a few years ago, we would have called magic.