this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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They're burning billions because they're trying to rush ahead of the competition in capabilities. No matter how good LLMs get, that is not their goal. They're trying to reach AGI and there are no second places in that race.
Thinking that LLMs will ever become AGI is fucking hysterical, and that is what the shills keep saying is going to happen. They are trying to turn lead into gold using a stove and a skillet.
No money they have dumped into LLMs is going to contribute to something that could achieve AGI. They are running the wrong race.
Mind quoting the part where I claimed LLMs will become AGI?
Altman and the other shills claim that.
Are you an AI shill?
If not, then I didn't say you claimed that.
Then I don't see how your response in any way relates to what I said.
Whether you think they'll ever get there or not is completely irrelevant. That is still what they're after and the reason for the massive upfront investments.
There is no AGI. Whatever they reach, there will always be a next level.
In the 1980s if you said you could make a computer play Go better than the best human masters, there are those who would have said "that would be true artificial intelligence." Then it happened, and the world moved on.
There was a time when a computer understanding speech, translating languages, would have been considered true artificial intelligence, then we got there, and the world moved on.
LLMs have solved a mathematical question left open with prize money for decades unsolved by humans (just one, really, that I know of, so far...), but that's not AGI yet...
Many forms of "the Turing Test" are being passed by LLMs tested against the majority of the general population now, but apparently that's not AGI yet...
AGI will continue to be a moving goalpost, as it should be. It's not a finish line, it's a journey. Even when automated systems are building themselves from raw material inputs, designing and building their own infrastructure, power plants, communications, and continuously improving their own designs, there will be those who still design new tests for "AGI" that they don't pass, yet.
AI and AGI are not synonymous terms. We've had AI since 1956. General intelligence means human-level intelligence. When an AI system can do any task as well as or better than humans can, it's by definition generally intelligent.
We're not changing the definitions. People thought that chess is so hard that once an AI system can play chess it has to be as intelligent as humans. That just turned out to be a false assumption. A system can be superhuman at playing chess but that ability doesn't need to translate to any other field.
Applicable quote from a Yosemite park ranger: "There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists."
Sounds like changing definitions to me.
AlphaZero has been superhuman at playing chess, Go, and basically any game with perfect information and fixed rules since early 2018. That's translatable to other fields - it's not as strong in some fields as it is in playing Go, but it's still translatable ability...
But it's not. It's a hypothesis that was proven incorrect by running the experiment.
I didn't say it doesn't ever translate to other fields. I said that it doesn't need to. That's the difference between narrow and general intelligence. You can be superhuman at X but have zero clue how to do Y. It's still intelligence but it's not general or "human level"
I think they know AGI is far off, and are setting a more medium term goal. I think they are just trying to corner the new LLM market that might emerge. Even if the bubble pops and 3/4 go bust, they hope to be the one that survives and gets to be the quasi-monopoly in that market for the next decade.
Nobody "knows" that AGI is far off just like nobody knows that it's near either. That is not an established fact. Those are both just popular narratives in their respective camps. We could get there tomorrow or it could take usanother 400 years. Both are plausible outcomes.
Sure just like we could discover the Greek gods exist tomorrow.
The point is that there is no reason to plan towards AGI for those CEOs.
Ridicule is evasion, not counter.
That's okay with me. This discussion hasn't been fruitful since you latched on to the term "know" instead of engaging with the content.