Is Sam Altman Right About AGI Coming in 2025? Expert Analysis

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Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is something that bounces between a theoretical concept and a plausible invention in our lifetimes.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman suggested in a blog post titled ‘Reflections,’ posted on January 6, 2025, that “we are now confident we know how to build AGI.”

He had to clarify his remarks on January 20, explaining: “We are not going to deploy AGI next month, nor have we built it.

“We have some very cool stuff for you, but please chill and cut your expectations 100x!”

Are we close to AGI — the idea that artificial intelligence (AI) can become so broad as to mimic and even surpass human intelligence — or is there still too high a technical barrier to reach?

Techopedia explores Altman’s claims and asks the experts if there is any chance that AGI will arrive in 2025.

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Key Takeaways

  • OpenAI’s Sam Altman predicts AGI could debut as early as 2025, although he later told his X/Twitter followers: “We have not built it.”
  • Current AI models like ChatGPT excel at pattern recognition, but they lack the reasoning, common sense, and autonomy needed for AGI.
  • Experts tell Techopedia AGI will require breakthroughs in continual learning, neuromorphic hardware, and adaptive AI systems — but it is possible.
  • While some believe AGI is imminent, others, like Demis Hassabis, predict it may still be a decade or more away.
  • The impact of AGI will raise questions about job displacement and humanity’s role.

Is AGI Coming in 2025?

The release of ChatGPT in November 2022 and recent innovations in the large language models (LLMs) market introduced the practical uses of AI to the masses.

As we move closer to the rumored GPT-5, thoughts of the next leap constantly emerge.

Lou Steinberg, founder and managing partner at CTM Insights, told Techopedia:

“OpenAI has strongly suggested that they have new types of models which can do more than synthesize — they can reason.

 

“That would mean going from displacing tasks that require doing something (summarise and email), to displaying creativity and understanding,

 

“Reasoning would let AI look forward, not backward, at training data. AGI could invent new drugs and recipes that are better than what they’ve seen.

 

They could design above-average code instead of just implementing average routines. They could write novels like the next Hemingway.”

Despite later needing to ask followers to “cut their expectations,” Sam Altman, who knows more about ChatGPT’s future than the rest of us, suggested in a video interview in December 2024 that we could see AGI in 2025.

He dove a bit deeper in a ‘Reflections’ blog post on January 6, 2025:

“As we get closer to AGI, it feels like an important time to look at the progress of our company.

 

“We started OpenAI almost nine years ago because we believed that AGI was possible, and that it could be the most impactful technology in human history.

 

“We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it.

 

“We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents “join the workforce” and materially change the output of companies.”

Why AI Has a Long Way to Go Before AGI

As Sam Altman said, hold your horses for the moment.

Other ‘Godfathers of AI’ see the AGI horizon as slightly further away.

Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, believes that AI, which can reason as well as humans, is still a decade away, and Geoffrey Hinton, often referred to as the godfather of AI, believes it could be up to 20 years away.

One of the reasons that we are still far from AGI is modern AI’s reliance on LLMs, the staple in leading products like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

Unlike a human being, an LLM is not conscious and does not have the common sense to walk through logical problems. It simply analyzes patterns in its training data and uses that to predict a response that matches the user’s prompt intent.

Such models will need to be improved substantially before they can begin to replicate human intelligence.

That said, we are seeing AI models “outperform” humans on certain tasks. For instance, LLMs can create written content and images at a scale that neither human writers nor designers can keep up with (though human creatives can offer more to engage with from an artistic standpoint).

We’re also starting to see companies like OpenAI and Microsoft investing in creating AI agents to automate entire workflows and perform actions with minimal human interaction.

Dev Nag, founder and CEO at QueryPal, told Techopedia:

“AGI isn’t just theoretically possible; it is achievable given sufficient breakthroughs in machine learning and computational hardware.

“The human brain proves the existence of a physical system capable of general intelligence, providing a roadmap for what’s achievable under the laws of physics and information theory.

“However, getting there will require huge leaps in areas such as continual learning to address catastrophic forgetting, neuromorphic hardware to replicate brain-level energy efficiency, and novel architectures for meta-learning and hierarchical planning.

“As others have said, there are probably about a dozen Nobel-Prize-level breakthroughs between now and AGI.”

The Bottom Line

It’s becoming increasingly clear that we are firmly on the road to AGI in one form or another.

AI models are emerging that can perform tasks more efficiently than human beings and more advanced systems will likely emerge that outstrip human competency in other areas.

Whether any will count as truly ‘conscious’ will need to be a conversation for another day.

What this means for society and the labor market is not clear. If reskilling or outcompeting AI is not an option in the long run, what will human beings do? We’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.

FAQs

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Tim Keary
Technology Writer
Tim Keary
Technology Writer

Tim Keary is a technology writer and reporter covering AI, cybersecurity, and enterprise technology. Before joining Techopedia full-time in 2023, his work appeared on VentureBeat, Forbes Advisor, and other notable technology platforms, where he covered the latest trends and innovations in technology. He holds a Master’s degree in History from the University of Kent, where he learned of the value of breaking complex topics down into simple concepts. Outside of writing and conducting interviews, Tim produces music and trains in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA).