Why we’re unlikely to get artificial general intelligence anytime soon

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, recently told President Donald Trump during a private phone call that it would arrive before the end of his administration. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, OpenAI‘s primary rival, repeatedly told podcasters it could happen even sooner. Tech billionaire Elon Musk has said it could be here before the end of the year.

Like many other voices across Silicon Valley and beyond, these executives predict that the arrival of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is imminent.

Since the early 2000s, when a group of fringe…