John C. Havens

AGI Hype Masks Undefined Goals, Urging Corporate Accountability

The "race to AGI" is framed as positive for society, or at least the people talking about their society or government. This framing or narrative implies the following: - There is a globally accepted definition of AGI (there isn't). - That "AGI" provides ways to care for humans and planet now (they don't). - That "scaling at all costs" logic to achieve AGI is empirically sound (it's not). - Users of GenAI have agreed to "AGI" logic driving society (they haven't). - "AGI" framings mention caregiving, human / planetary rights (they don't). Where any organization, government or individual doesn't question these framings of AGI yet uses GenAI tools whose founders or whose mission statements regularly note their vision is BASED in this existing AGI logic - Then those orgs and individuals are supporting this logic. It's a very good time for orgs using ANY GenAI tool whose founders support an ill-defined economic / societal vision to provide their thoughts in press releases justifying their logic. Having worked at senior levels in PR previously in my career, these releases will potentially be quite awkward, eg: "Our organization recognizes that our use of OpenAI wrappers or tools means we are either ignorantly or overtly supporting OpenAI's mission to ( https://openai.com/about/ ) 'ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.' While our customers expect & demand transparency in the products we provide & specifics regarding things like how we use or share their data, our entire organization has opted to ignore the fact that 'AGI' is a term not universally defined or agreed upon by 'experts' (in quotes as many of the creators of GenAI tech are the ones providing definitions of 'AGI'). And that even where AGI is vaguely defined, the phrase 'benefits all of humanity' doesn't include links to or citations of globally accepted regulations or laws regarding human or planetary rights. We also wish to publicly state that we are knowingly advancing the vague 'race to AGI' which instantiates our doubling down on being a part of a narrative not providing pragmatic metrics or KPIs regarding how a subjective projections for a potential future can protect our customers and the planet right now. We appreciate that by telling our customers that we also don't know what 'AGI' is, that our efforts to support GenAI offered by OpenAI whose MISSION is based in this ill-defined 'AGI,' will provide comfort via our admission of ignorance. This is justified by momentary / potential increases of profits or 'efficiencies' that we're hoping prove our ignoring all other AI applications that still provide genuine value. We will also work to deprioritize testing of world models or active inference or ANY other types of AI applications that don't rely on a constant focus of a non-existent ideological framing driving the adoption and proliferation of GenAI by GenAI orgs. We appreciate this opportunity to justify our ignorance."