Is Artificial General Intelligence Already Here? One AI Founder Thinks So

Artificial general intelligence may have already arrived.

That’s according to Eliza Labs founder Shaw Walters, with whom he spoke Declutter last week during ETHDenver. Walters said current leading models already meet his definition of artificial general intelligence, known as AGI.

“I think we’re at the inflection point where we have AGI,” he said. “I am completely convinced that this is general intelligence. It is nothing like us. It learns in a very different way, but it is nevertheless intelligent and very general.”

Originally launched in 2024 as ai16z, Walters founded Eliza Labs, which created the open-source ElizaOS, one of the first frameworks for creating autonomous AI agents for blockchains.

First coined in 1997 and later popularized by researchers including the founder of SingularityNET Ben GoertzelArtificial general intelligence refers to a theoretical form of AI designed to match or exceed human cognitive skills across a broad spectrum of tasks.

While prominent AI developers, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, warn that AGI could emerge within the next decade, Walters rejected the idea that it would emerge as one dominant system.

“I just don’t see it as the AI ​​god,” he said. “That will never happen, because life likes variations.”

Walters said he first started working on AI agents during the GPT-3 era, when structured results were unreliable.

“It felt like most of the work I did was putting training wheels on a baby,” he said. “Just keeping it going, making sure it responds with the structure I need to parse what the action was. It was a huge problem.”

Progress came with the launch of GPT-4 in 2023, which Walters said allowed for more reliable answers.

“It was incredibly good at giving a structured response, and now I could actually call action,” he said. “That was where we went from barely working to being able to make an agent do things, but it was still very limited.”

AI agents have moved from experimental chatbots to persistent systems embedded in crypto and consumer platforms.

In February, OpenClaw rose to roughly 147,000 GitHub shines and has spawned projects including the AI ​​“social media” platform Moltbook, while Coinbase “Agent purses” on Base and Fetch.ai, his agents said they were able to complete it purchases use of the Visa infrastructure.

However, when agents gained root access and wallet control, Walters said the initial excitement gave way to deep security concerns.

As developers at ETHDenver promoted the benefits of AI agents in crypto, Walters warned that as AI evolves toward AGI, it will behave less like a predictable machine and more like a fallible human, making foolproof security impossible to develop.

“Ultimately you’re dealing with something that’s more like a human and less like a calculator,” he said. “It will do stupid things sometimes, and there’s just no way to build a super-secure system that will stop them from doing something stupid.”