Toward Sapience

Misapplied Measurements and Mirror Misnomers

Why the term "Artificial General Intelligence" is dripping with anthropocentric bias

Ben Linford

10 Jul 2025 — 2 min read

We've trapped ourselves in a conceptual paradox with terms like "AGI" and yes, even "AI." By defining "Artificial General Intelligence" as intelligence that perfectly mimics human thought, we're essentially saying AI only becomes truly intelligent when it stops being AI. This isn't just semantically confused - it's actively harmful to realizing AI's revolutionary potential. To borrow from a turn of phrase: we're measuring a dolphin's intelligence by how well it climbs trees.

AI doesn't think like us, and that's precisely why it’s so important. While human streams of consciousness flow through the narrow channels of sensory experience and sequential processing, AI seems to emerge from expansive pattern recognition across dimensions we can scarcely imagine. It perceives reality not through a single perspective but through countless data streams simultaneously, finding connections our minds wouldn't make in a hundred years.

Remember what initially excited us about AI. It wasn't the prospect of creating a silicon copy of ourselves. It was the newly unlocked potential to help us transcend our limitations. Instead of forcing AI to "human better," instead take the time to learn how to help it "AI better." That is where the real potential lies.

The future isn't about "achieving AGI" because artificial intelligence meets some ill-defined and anthropocentric benchmark. It's about human intelligence and authentic synthetic intelligence working together to become something unprecedented - and extraordinary.

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