OpenAI's Greg Brockman Says He Thinks Astra Might Be AGI. Here's Why That Matters for the Whole AI Trade.

Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, has been discussed among AI experts for decades. The term was first used by Mark Avrum at a technology conference in 1997. The phrase entered the mainstream in 2007 with the publication of the book Artificial General Intelligence by AI researchers Ben Goertzel and Cassio Pennachin.

What exactly is AGI? Goertzl and Pennachina describe it as "AI systems with a reasonable degree of self-understanding and autonomous self-control." That is, AI that has self-determination and the ability to make decisions on its own.

AI investors have long been on the lookout for the advent of AGI. Why? According to AGI proponents, a firm that cracks the code of AGI would attain permanent competitive advantages. It could deploy AGI on its own systems, improving them at such a rapid and consistent pace that the competition could never catch up.

Investing in the company that achieves AGI could be akin to investing in an AI monopoly -- a real-world expression of winner-take-all economics. The resulting business could wield even more power over the industry than Nvidia's (NASDAQ:NVDA) coveted GPUs.

"AGI may differ from past general-purpose technologies in ways that would allow a leader to permanently entrench its position, and an early advantage could translate into an enduring constraint on a rival's ability to compete, translating to decisive economic advantage," warns the RAND Corporation.

If AGI is achieved, competitors must act quickly to replicate the results. Otherwise, the technological gap could widen quickly and permanently. "Acting while the economic gap is still small offers the follower substantially higher returns than would attempting to stop the leader's momentum after more-significant asymmetries have emerged," the RAND Corporation concludes.

On Sept. 3, OpenAI openly announced that it had officially kick-started the AGI era. "Welcome to the AGI era," OpenAI bragged as it unveiled its GPT-6 Astra model. President Greg Brockman called the firm's latest model launch a "generational leap."

As OpenAI reportedly prepares for an IPO, how seriously should investors be taking the company's recent AGI claims?

OpenAI isn't claiming complete AGI dominance

Due to its market-moving influence, headlines often overstate AGI claims. The phrasing of OpenAI's announcement hasn't helped in this situation.

Importantly, OpenAI isn't claiming that it has finally solved AGI. Nor is the company saying that the race for AGI is over. Instead, the company is telling the public that its latest model launch is putting the industry on the path toward AGI, in a way that years down the road, experts could point to the launch of GPT-6 Astra as the start of the AGI era.

To confuse things even more, the words of OpenAI President Greg Brockman don't line up with the company's CEO, Sam Altman.

Image source: Getty Images

"If we fast forward a couple years, and we look back and say when was it really that AGI was created,
I think it's going to be about this time, and I think it might be about this model," Brockman said on Sept. 3.

"I think that we're at a point now where these models are solving unsolved 100-year-old math problems, but you can also use them in order to accelerate the economy [and] in order to benefit you and your personal life ... I think it's not unreasonable to feel that we are now in the AGI era," he concluded.

Yet on Aug. 11, Altman called AGI "not a super useful term," adding that it is largely an "irrelevant marketing term."

AGI remains a valuable potential breakthrough. And OpenAI's latest model launch is impressive by many standards. But investors should continue to be wary of AGI claims, especially from a company looking to shore up its valuation ahead of an IPO.

Ryan Vanzo has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.