AGI is a black swan. Even as a booster and techno-optimist I concede that getting there (rhetorically) requires a first principles assumptions-scaffolding that relies on at-least-in-part-untested hypotheses. Proving its impossibility is similarly fraught.

Thus we are left in this noisy, hype-addled discourse. I suspect these scientists are pushing against some perceived pathological thread of that discourse…without their particular context, I categorize it as more of this metaphysical noise.

Meanwhile, let’s keep chipping away at the next problem.