The AGI Divide: Why a Superintelligence Won’t Belong to Everyone

Most people talk about artificial general intelligence as if it were a kind of public event. One day, the story goes, we cross some invisible line, and suddenly “AGI is here.” Journalists announce it. CEOs tweet about it. The models get smarter, the apps get better, and eventually everyone has a little piece of godlike intelligence running on their phone, answering questions, solving problems, making life easier.

It’s a strangely comforting fantasy: the idea that when a mind greater than ours emerges, it will arrive as a consumer product. Something you can subscribe to. Something with a login screen and a dark mode and a slider for “creativity.”

But if you stop and think about what true AGI would actually mean—an intelligence that can outperform humans at almost an ...