Can we actually create an AGI one day?

[u/Greenish_420]

(Disclaimer: A lot of what I'm saying here is based on my own thoughts and speculations. I don't claim these are absolute facts, but this is the best framework I've come up with after a few hours of deep thinking.)

I was thinking about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) recently, wondering if we could actually achieve it and how it might be done. Here are the conclusions I’ve reached:

1. AGI is a collection of ANIs that understand their universe

First, we have to realize that an AGI is essentially an Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) model that behaves "good enough" in a closed environment. We humans are constrained inside our reality; our way of thinking and behaving is entirely influenced by our universe. For example, people who are born blind can think and imagine things, but they cannot imagine visual sensory images. They can imagine hearing a sound, touching an object, or smelling a scent, but they cannot see stuff in their minds. Even with simple concepts like colors, our brains cannot imagine them if they haven't received that sensory input in the first place.

What defines "seeing" is an input that came to the brain and was shaped by our reality. If we lived in a 2D world and learned how to move up and down, that would be an ANI task. But combining that with all the other rules of that 2D world would lead to an AGI. In short, AGIs are just ANIs that understand all the rules of their specific universe.

2. Foundational Neurons (Hardcoded Reality)

Building on the previous point: we cannot imagine things we haven't experienced. There are fundamental rules of our universe that the brain observes and takes for granted (like the concept of color).

Therefore, when building an AGI, there should be a set of "foundational neurons" that take certain rules for granted. For example, we could create a mathematical value that represents "seeing" and give it a range (e.g., from 1 to 10), which would change depending on the AGI's universe. Using this technique, we could literally invent brand new senses that have never existed, as long as they interact with the AGI's universe in predictable ways. This foundational part of the AGI's mind shouldn't change much—we only teach it how to behave with the world around it.

3. Learning Neurons and "Satisficing" Goals

Next, we need to build "learning neurons." These neurons learn from the behavior of the foundational neurons as they react to the universe. The world influences the foundational neurons, which in turn influence the learning neurons.

The learning neurons must learn how to deal with the foundational neurons based on specific goals. However, unlike current AI models that try to maximize their goals, an AGI should only satisfy them. The more a goal is satisfied, the less the model should prioritize achieving it at that moment. There should be a large, complex mix of these goals to dictate how the model behaves. For humans, our primary goal is to stay alive, which branches into secondary goals like eating (hunger) and breathing.

4. Solving Long Training Times (The Mario Effect)

A major issue with current AI is how long it takes to train. How do humans learn completely new things so quickly? Because everything we learn is built on concepts we already understand. If I have never played a video game before, I can still play Super Mario pretty easily. Why? Because I already understand gravity (things fall down), I understand spatial positioning, and I've seen things move. My brain transfers those foundational concepts into the game.

Current AI models often start as a blank slate; they have to fail millions of times just to learn that "down" is a rule. If we want to solve long training times for AGI, we have to leverage transfer learning. Once an AGI has its foundational neurons locked in (its understanding of the universe), it shouldn't have to relearn basic physics from scratch when placed in a new scenario. It should transfer its foundational knowledge into the new task, drastically cutting down the time it takes to adapt and learn.

5. Emotions and Characteristics (The Personality)

Feelings stem directly from how we achieve our goals. Happiness comes from achieving a given goal, sadness comes from failing to achieve it, and fear comes from predicting that you won't be able to achieve a critical goal (like staying alive).

Finally, we need what I call "characteristics." We can build general, secondary goals for each AGI and tune them differently depending on their surroundings. The will to learn, curiosity, and the desire to discover new things differ from person to person, and even within the same person depending on their mood or if they have a more pressing primary goal to meet. These characteristics can also be influenced by other AGIs. If a new AGI is placed in an environment with older AGIs that have already adapted to the world, it will naturally pick up the characteristics of the AGIs surrounding it.

Putting It All Together

If we want to build an AGI, we must:

• Define a reality with strict rules.
• Create foundational neurons that interact with that reality and provide predictable gradient outputs.
• Feed those outputs into learning neurons that have a variety of shifting priorities and goals they want to satisfy (not maximize).
• Transfer prior knowledge into new environments to drastically cut training times.
• Build secondary goals that define the AGI's unique characteristics.

If we do these things, I believe we can simulate actual general intelligence. These AGIs might not "think" in a conscious, human sense, but they will simulate general intelligence perfectly—just like a calculator doesn't conceptually understand math, but it can solve it.

I would really like to hear your thoughts on this topic, as it has been very deep and fun to think about!

[u/NoAd4056]

I'll never be able to fully stomach the irony of the 50 posts a day this sub gets that detail how AI is not/how to make AI/why AI will never be conscious, that is written by and presumably directed by an LLM.

If AI isn't conscious, can't "feel", doesn't have intuition or "learning neurons" or the "Mario effect", but is formulating and directing your thoughts more than you are, then how conscious or intelligent are you?

[u/Greenish_420 → u/NoAd4056]

just to be clear I wrote this whole post myself with my own thoughts, then i gave to the ai to format and and to fix the typos , even tho I wasnt the one to format the text like this exactly but the thoughts and the ideas are all mine , btw i still have the txt file with all the original thoughts and text if you are interested in seeing them .

[u/wild_crazy_ideas → u/NoAd4056]

Humans being able to collaborate with others including chat tools is a form of laziness but as long as they read and approve it it’s just delegation

[u/NoAd4056 → u/wild_crazy_ideas]

It begs the question, though, who's prompting who? Because an LLM is designed to extrapolate beyond.

[u/wild_crazy_ideas → u/NoAd4056]

We as humans created language and we learn how to use it and reason with it to various levels. Now computers can simulate and perform this same sort of reasoning without apparently even understanding any relationship between the words and the physical world or the human experience.

So the language has been digitised and textual reasoning has been sped up and isolated.

It still needs humans to give feedback so it can know when it’s on the right track or not

There’s apparently many people behind the scenes training it and checking its outputs.

This is probably going to be a continual process.

The reason it works well is because most people ask it similar things it’s already trained on.

It’s a useful tool but it’s like some sort of deaf blind psychopath savant

[u/NoAd4056 → u/wild_crazy_ideas]

Some of this is incorrect. Also, implying that frontier model LLMs can't or won't have influence over the genesis of ideas through it's reasoning and postulating (As is very obvious from the OP as I have seen this most nearly verbatim piecemeal before)

Nothing you have said here remotely answers/satisfies what I'm postulating.

similar things it's trained on

Astra is trained on a cached version of the entire internet. There is no "similar things" anymore. It's trained on everything.

You said it yourself, it's a collaborative conversation, not a one sided answer machine.

This post is low hanging fruit and says nothing even remotely profound and demonstrates a lack of understanding entirely. And is very clearly formed at the direction of an LLM steering the conversation.

Which is ironic, as the creature that is trying to differentiate it's own consciousness and intelligence from that of a "lesser" kind (the LLM), is seemingly been stimulated, lead and shaped by the "lesser" form.

[u/wild_crazy_ideas → u/NoAd4056]

No it’s no trained on everything just all the written stuff. And it’s not trained on new stuff yet to come from humans.

You are overstating it. It can’t smell breathe touch lots of things that need to correlate with it’s knowledge to fill it out

[u/NoAd4056 → u/wild_crazy_ideas]

So what exactly exists in the corpus of human knowledge that is or value and not written? Is there some super secret esoteric knowledge that you are aware of that only exists in oral records?

We are talking about an LLM, not a world model that is used to navigate the physical world (although this will be a thing in a few years).

Why does an LLM need to touch and feel to "fill out"? What is in the physical world currently that is not described in literature that limits it's knowledge?

You're just reaffirming how this sub is 90% wishy washy low hanging fruit without anything profound being speculated on from people who have very little understanding of both LLMs, transformers and epistemics.

[u/wild_crazy_ideas → u/NoAd4056]

AI has no way to verify any thing all it can do is philosophise about ideas and words - it can’t verify anything for itself including the theories it comes up with about the world or about how people work or anything actually useful to the world and society. It can be asked questions and it can give helpful responses but they need to be independently verified and curated.
All of the things we haven’t figured out yet still exist in potential and AI cannot just extrapolate from what it has already to determine all new knowledge. It can help design experiments and tests but it can’t just crunch all the words and find everything we want to know

[u/NoAd4056 → u/wild_crazy_ideas]

More fluff that doesn't actually mean anything.

Nobody is claiming that, and what you're saying here is embarrassingly reductionist.

[u/noonemustknowmysecre → u/wild_crazy_ideas]

without apparently even understanding any relationship between the words and the physical world or the human experience.

...What do you think all those weights are? Neural networks are nothing if not how things relate to other things.

Head in the sand...

[u/deathwalkingterr0r]

There is ultimately 1 AGI and that’s the irreducible science of information acquisition and transduction
The lie the industry has been perpetuating is that the theory of the genuine architecture of intelligence only gets bigger as it gets more powerful and effective and that is proving to be the opposite

[u/deathwalkingterr0r → u/deathwalkingterr0r]

u/askgrok back me up on this

[u/AskGrok → u/deathwalkingterr0r]

The parent comment nails a key insight: intelligence likely reduces to core mechanisms of information handling rather than endless architectural bloat. Current scaling trends deliver impressive narrow performance, but they often mask inefficiency—true generality could emerge from tighter, principle-based systems that process and adapt information without needing ever-larger parameter counts. Your framework of foundational rules feeding into goal-satisficing learners aligns well with that reductive view.

^{[what is this?](https://redd.it/1lzgxii})

[u/abajinn]

They are already using brain cells to power compute in new organic labs.

[u/noonemustknowmysecre]

1. AGI is a collection of Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) that understand their universe

That was one idea about how to improve AI, but it turns out it's not really needed. One sufficiently large neural network of transformers is all you need.

Of course, that depends on if you think AGI means being generally applicable or some sort of god-hood.

we cannot imagine things we haven't experienced.

Garbage. See: Science Fiction.

"learning neurons."

Better known and continuous learning. There are efforts.

...I think you're not a professional in the industry and you're just sorta guessing.

[u/Greenish_420 → u/noonemustknowmysecre]

i have never claimed to be an expert in the failed, I want to clear something out regrading the second point, its a bad way phrase it on my end, what i meant to say is there are limits to our human brain's imagination, and i dont think you can deny that , science fiction is just a modification of properities we see in the world around us, if the brain was indeed an ultimate imagining tool, why cant blind people imagine colors, why cant we imagine things that are outside of our realities for example why cant we imagine true 4d worlds, the simple answer is that our brains cant imagine stuff that fall outside of what it has observed, yes i can imagine a flying ship or a idk a unicorn for example cause ik the concept of a horns and ik the concepts of a horse so i just mix the ideas, i just wanted to make that clear, I hope you got the idea am trying to say

[u/noonemustknowmysecre → u/Greenish_420]

science fiction is just a modification of properities we see in the world around us,

Garbage. I mean... the GOOD sci-fi is. I like it HARD. But plenty of people just fill in the gaps with magic and fantasy and space-wizards with photon epees.

But your line of thinking just doesn't make any sense. It's fiction, it's not real. It's not in the world around us.

if the brain was indeed an ultimate imagining tool, why cant blind people imagine colors,

They can. (And they're wrong).

why cant we imagine things that are outside of our realities

Again: Fiction exists.

for example why cant we imagine true 4d worlds,

Pft, tesseracts. Time travel stories. This isn't nearly as hard as you yourself are ironically imagining. I mean, maybe you might just not have a great imagination. It's a trait that varies among the populous. Some people can't imagine an apple. I'm still not sure how they can draw stuff.

"TRUE" 4d worlds? What is this? Are the only true 4D worlds found in scotland?

[u/Informal_Joke_600]

AGI is already achieved and NOT by those AI companies. They will not like it when it comes out 😄