AGI is a very common term in artificial intelligence discussions and has been mentioned here quite often – not sure how you could have missed it. Such as in these threads, just to cite a few:
I’m obviously not following them as closely is i thought !
It’s entirely possible I’ve seen it and it just didn’t register. I’m a little dyslexic, so all acronyms kinda look alike to me, unless i use them so often that i pronounce them in my head. Also, maybe it’s more common in AI discussions here than in the places where i typically have AI discussions. Dunno.
Not everyone learns acronyms readily. Not everyone is good at recognizing acronyms. I’m not suggesting you avoid using common acronyms, just that you explain them politely if someone inquiries. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable ask.
I was unaware of it prior to this thread.
I’m an IT professional and deal with discussions about adopting AI where I work.
Perhaps it’s not nearly as ubiquitous as you assume.
“AGI” didn’t mean anything to me (in the context of AI) either. I’m not an IT professional, nor an AI expert of any kind, but I at least am familiar enough with the concept of AI that I might click on a thread titled “Is AI overhyped?”
I suspect it’s a very common term to a subset of people who discuss artificial intelligence.
I would think that AGI, meaning artificial general intelligence, is less related to information technology than it is to science fiction. Even then, if you read lots of space opera, but not futurism, cyberpunk, or singularity stuff, you may still have not encountered it.
However, in agreement with the OP’s point, if you have been paying attention to the artificial intelligence talk of the last few years, then you probably will have encountered AGI, particularly as a distinction from large language models, which is generally what is meant when people talk about current AI technology.
So yes, anyone in a position to answer the question would know exactly what AGI meant in the context.
Asking for clarity or definitions related to a question does not bother me. What really does bother is people who feel like responding to the question with something, that is neither an answer or attempt to better understand the question. Sometimes this can be straight up threadshitting “AI is stupid, and you’re stupid for trying to understand it.” Other times it just makes me wonder why the person is even in the thread in the first place, “I don’t know what the best rock album of 1975 is, because I don’t listen to much rock.”
I wouldn’t expect someone involved in applying contemporary AI to business applications to necessarily have a professional interest in AGI, but it’s been a central focus of discussions about AI evolution for decades now in the AI research community. It has nothing to do with IT, at least as it exists today.
Welcome to the 21st century, where thousands of papers like this about AGI are being published in academic journals, where in fact there’s an entire journal dedicated to the subject (Journal of Artificial General Intelligence), and where papers are being published on the subject even outside the context of AI. This is absolutely not “sci-fi” any more.
LLMs are only a small subset of current AI technology. They’ve made a big impression on the public zeitgeist because their primary goal of carrying on seemingly intelligent conversations has been extraordinarily successful and the public has been widely exposed to it, but it’s far from being the only contemporary AI technology. It’s just that LLMs are quite new and have been unexpectedly successful to the point that they could plausibly pass the Turing test, if anyone considers that to be a worthwhile benchmark any more.
I think the three most hyped/publicly known current AI categories are LLMs, image/video generators, and self-driving cars.
I notice that the name of the journal isn’t “journal of AGI”. It’s completely unremarkable that there’s a journal of that name, and its existence says nothing about how common it is in general writing to see the abbreviation “AGI” without and explanation.
The OP asked to discuss a video. AGI is defined in the first 30 seconds of that video. 15 seconds if you watch on double speed.
We get so few GD threads, let’s not discourage the few folks willing to actually start them by telling them they should wait until they have enough time to pander to people whom they don’t even want to engage with. It’s ok to not understand a thread.
I haven’t claimed that “AGI” is common and should be understood in general writing. I said it was very common in the context of AI-focused discussions. It’s been in use for decades in the AI community.
I actually do find it rather remarkable that there’s an entire journal dedicated to it, though, because it’s still a speculative area. But it does illustrate how important the concept is because it’s central to discussions about AI achieving and then exceeding the capabilities of human intelligence.
Of course the full name of the acronym will be spelled out in the journal name, because journal names convey no context and the names of all academic journals often appear together in sorted listings of journal impact factors and other general situations where the journal name must be self-explanatory.
Huh? Who made that request? I simply requested that if someone asks about an acronym, it’s helpful to answer the question. It doesn’t have to fall to the OP to do so, anyone who understood the acronym can do so.
And if the OP is the only person in the thread who knows what their acronym meant, they really ought to explain it. 
But also, in general, the assumption that “anyone who doesn’t recognize this acronym can’t possibly participate” is false. Not in every case. But often enough that it’s rude to make that assumption.
Also, the usefulness of having AGI explained to you depends on the context of the question. If you ask a social question like if AGI would be a positive or negative to society, you can reasonably have a useful answer even if you have to have the concept explained to you because you are part of society. But it is a technical question about the hardware/software involved, then if you don’t already have some familiarity with the area, then there is essentially no chance you will have a useful answer after having had it explained to you. That thread in question probably had a somewhat unclear thread title, seeming like the thread will be about a cultural issue, but reading the OP you see the actual question is about the technology: are the people saying AIG will be achieved soon being overly optimistic?
Let’s say there is a thread titled “Is a Macintosh computer any good?” but in the text of the OP you see that they are actually asking about the font support in Adobe Premiere Pro Macintosh version vs. Windows version. Two very different questions requiring two very different levels of familiarity.
Maybe.
A lot of areas use jargon and niche vocabulary and one might have insights after clarifying what is meant.
Sometimes unexpressed things like stated or unstated assumptions, boundary conditions, tradition or local practice affect results but knowing what is assumed remains important because the answer might be garbage.
Sometimes memes, humour or the Marvel universe depend on knowing previous things.
Sometimes problems are wicked and hard to express and in such cases understanding the correct question may be the best answer.
But yeah. In general, if you don’t understand the basics the advanced stuff will elude you.
On the one hand letting people take deductions prior to computing their total income is an important way to make sure income taxes are progressive, but on the other hand, without something like the three laws of robotics in place, we could find ourselves in a Skynet type situation.
Anyone who took more time asking than it would have taken to hear the definition in the video or mouse over (no reading necessary) the Wikipedia link in the second post absolutely should not be participating.
You know that “moussing over” doesn’t work on mobile, right?
But sometimes I’m not trying to bring anything to the thread; sometimes I’m trying to get something from it. Or is only the OP allowed to learn anything?
?אם לא תשאל, איך תדע
In the spirit of the thread, I ran that through Google Translate instead of asking what it meant.
Yes, I quickly learned to be wary of “Factual Questions”. There are a lot of very knowledgeable people here in many different areas so, unless I believe I have something worthy, I keep quiet.