According to The Verge, the tech industry’s obsession with the term “Artificial General Intelligence” or AGI is officially over. CEOs from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft have spent the past year publicly downplaying the term, with leaders like Sam Altman calling it “not a super useful term” and Satya Nadella dismissing “AGI hype” as “nonsensical benchmark hacking.” In its place, companies are pushing a cornucopia of new branded terms: Meta has “personal superintelligence,” Microsoft has “humanist superintelligence,” Amazon has “useful general intelligence,” and Anthropic has “powerful AI.” This rebrand comes after years of these same companies chasing the AGI benchmark, a pursuit complicated by a famously vague 2019 contract between OpenAI and Microsoft that hinged on the term’s definition.
Why AGI became a bad word
Here’s the thing: AGI was always a fuzzy target. The term, reportedly coined in 1997, aims for AI that matches or surpasses human smarts. But what does that even mean? As Google’s Jeff Dean noted, definitions vary “by factors of a trillion.” That vagueness became a massive liability. It created contract nightmares, like the one between Microsoft and OpenAI where the entire partnership’s terms shifted based on an undefined “AGI” milestone. The simplest fix? Just stop using the word. But the problems run deeper. AGI also accumulated some serious baggage. For years, tech leaders warned it could destroy humanity. That was great for drumming up investor fascination for a while, but public sentiment has soured. Marketing a product that people are afraid will end the world is, well, bad marketing. So the new terms aren’t just synonyms—they’re a strategic detox.
The gentle rebrand of superintelligence
So what are they selling instead? Look at the language. It’s all about service, approachability, and utility. Mark Zuckerberg’s “personal superintelligence” manifesto paints a picture of an AI best friend that helps you grow and create. Microsoft’s “Humanist Superintelligence” comes with a soft, sepia-toned website and promises tech that’s “problem-oriented” and works “in service of” people. Amazon’s “useful general intelligence” is framed as a practical productivity booster. They’re all desperately trying to distance themselves from the skynet narrative. Even Anthropic’s more aggressive “powerful AI”—described as a “country of geniuses in a datacenter”—focuses on concrete abilities like proving theorems, not on world domination. It’s a classic corporate move: when your old brand gets toxic, you launch a new product line with a friendlier vibe. Even if the underlying tech goals are basically the same.
The acronym soup is just beginning
And that’s the real kicker. We went from debating AGI to a sprawling list of new milestones: ASI, PSI, HSI, UGI. But do these distinctions matter? Probably not to anyone outside the boardrooms and research labs. Dario Amodei says his “powerful AI” could arrive “as early as 2026,” while Sam Altman says AGI is in the “reasonably close-ish future.” The timelines are just as vague as the definitions they’re replacing. This isn’t a scientific clarification; it’s a marketing and contractual segmentation. Each company is planting its own flag on the mountain of advanced AI, claiming a slightly different path to the top. It lets them set their own benchmarks, control their own narratives, and avoid the messy legal and public relations pitfalls of the old AGI framework. They’re building the same rocket, but now everyone gets to name their own spacecraft.
What this means for the rest of us
So what does this buzzword ballet mean for the actual development of AI? In the short term, not much. The engineering challenges remain monstrous. But in the long run, it signals a shift in how these companies want to be perceived. They’re moving from being perceived as reckless pioneers chasing a god-like intelligence to being seen as responsible builders of helpful tools. It’s a bid for trust and, let’s be honest, commercial viability. When you’re selling to businesses or trying to get your tech into schools and hospitals, you don’t lead with existential risk. You lead with empowerment and productivity. The rebrand is a sign that the AI industry is (slowly, awkwardly) maturing out of its hype-driven adolescence and into a phase where it needs to be palatable to the mainstream. Whether the technology itself becomes any less powerful or concerning is a whole other question. But at least it’ll have a nicer name.
