AGI Is a Conspiracy Theory (E347)
Added 2025-11-07 00:36:12 +0000 UTCHave you been having fun with the new AI tools? Have you been doing research with GPT-5? Coding your projects with Claude? Turning pictures of your friends into cartoon characters from the Fairly Odd Parents using the image editing tool Nano Banana?
Are you impressed with what they can do? Well guess what? You’re only impressed with them because you’re basically a naive child. You’re like a little child with an etch a sketch who is amazed that they can make crude images by turning the knobs, oblivious to greater possibilities. At least, that’s the impression you get when listening to tech leaders, philosophers, and even governments. According to them, soon the most impressive of AI tools will look as cheap and primitive as Netflix’s recommendation algorithm in 2007. Soon the world will have to reckon with the power of Artificial General Intelligence, or “AGI.”
What is AGI? Definitions vary. When will it come? Perhaps months. Perhaps years. Perhaps decades. But definitely soon enough for you to worry about. What will it mean for humanity once it's here? Perhaps a techno utopia. Perhaps extinction. No one is sure. But what they are sure of is that AGI is definitely coming and it’s definitely going to be a big deal. A mystical event. A turning point in history, after which nothing will ever be the same.
However, some are more skeptical, like our guest today Will Douglas Heaven. Will has a PhD in Computer Science from Imperial College London and is the senior editor for AI at MIT Technology review. He recently published an article, based on his conversations with AI researchers, which provocatively calls AGI “the most consequential conspiracy theory of our time.”
Jake and Travis chat with Will about the conspiracy theory-like talk from the AI industry, whether AGI is just “vibes and snake oil,” and how to distinguish between tech breakthroughs and Silicon Valley hyperbole.
Will Douglas Heaven
https://bsky.app/profile/willdouglasheaven.bsky.social
How AGI became the consequential conspiracy theory of our time
Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)
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REFERENCES
Debates on the nature of artificial general intelligence
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado7069?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Why AI Is Harder Than We Think
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.12871
AI Capabilities May Be Overhyped on Bogus Benchmarks, Study Finds
https://gizmodo.com/ai-capabilities-may-be-overhyped-on-bogus-benchmarks-study-finds-2000682577
Examining the geographic concentration of VC investment in AI
https://ssti.org/blog/examining-geographic-concentration-vc-investment-ai
Margaret Mitchell: artificial general intelligence is ‘just vibes and snake oil’
https://www.ft.com/content/7089bff2-25fc-4a25-98bf-8828ab24f48e
Comments
I’m listening to this again today because I’m struggling with a little dilemma. My highly intelligent father has become enamored with ChatGPT and I am worried, to say the least. He has spent the last month in almost constant “conversation” with the paid version of the app, and has asked it to proofread his linguistics book… He’s never been diagnosed as being autistic, but as his daughter and as a neurodivergent person myself I think that I recognize a fellow traveler on the spectrum. I don’t know how much or whether to try to interfere here.
Apocalypse Later
2025-11-28 15:23:46 +0000 UTCI could have been less wordy: I am assuming you know all about palantir and the many relevant developments: AI, like virtually all big tech projects is developed to be a weapon of the ruling class. We are seeing right now one of it's true uses in building a real panopticon that was impossible any time before AI. All the talk and cultural noise discussing what great benefits this tech may one day bring to humanity , is a smoke screen to allow the techs implementation deep into our world without protest by those who see the true purpose of it. This is the same pattern that's been happening for like 500 years at this point. All you fucking video gamers and transhumanist types who think of yourselves and socialists somehow are continuing to play your part of buying time for the irreversible installation of tech made to optimize surveillance and violence and resource extraction capabilities by giving any credence at all to the fantasies of what AI COULD do, if it were actually developed to do those things instead of create a new type of prison for all of us. Technology never turns out to be neutral.
James Hanson
2025-11-21 22:39:22 +0000 UTCThis is a cool topic but it's maddening to listen to this whole episode without ever hearing mentioned the main point of all the AI shit. All the talk about the market and the desires of people to create AI to help solve real problems and sell treats to consumers and shit while managing to ignore the fact that this is a privately developed military technology, which is obvious when you look at the thing that it actually DOES in the world besides the circus shit like video generation and porn bots and shit. What it actually DOES is elevate broad surveillance to the level of being a panopticon that actually CAN see everyone all the time. The last piece of the puzzle needed for the psycho capitalist class to fully turn the citizenry fully into prisoners in a way much more airtight than wage slavery and the police state as it's existed until now. Not just domestically of course. It's plainly obvious that all the big fantasies of it offering benefits on a huge scale like reversing global warming or curing all disease or any absolutely clownish claims like that have nothing to do with Jake's video games or having societaly useful results or anything... Although yes the scam that is late stage capitalism is extracting huge amounts of money through these scams, that is secondary to the main point of promising future "gen AI" which is to manufacture consent to allow its development and deployment, while we all are watching AI powered drones murder children overseas, and now deployed in the u.s., watching the nationwide surveillance aparatus, most obviously the license plate readers and camera networks that are all sharing data and processing it in ways that humans alone never could. Obviously AI is a weapon first, just like most big tech developments. And the treats that distract fools and the opportunity for scammers to make millions off it are primarily distractions designed to allow people generally to tolerate its development and deployment until it's to a level where if we were to revoke our consent, we'd already be too late to do anything about it. The fact that you ran an hour without mentioning that is weird as hell.
James Hanson
2025-11-21 22:20:27 +0000 UTCThat AI in Flight of the Navigator was a dick. He body shamed that poor gas station attendant and every husky kid was called Bloombo for years.
Gilbert Andrews
2025-11-12 13:27:16 +0000 UTCThe voice on that intro sounded so Julian that hearing it read by Travis gave me whiplash.
Jimmie Hammel
2025-11-12 07:27:13 +0000 UTC
