Recently, something shifted in the AI industry. Researchers began speaking urgently about the arrival of supersmart AI systems, a flood of intelligence. Not in some distant future, but imminently. They often refer AGI - Artificial General Intelligence - defined, albeit imprecisely, as machines that can outperform expert humans across most intellectual tasks. This availability of intelligence on demand will, they argue, change society deeply and will change it soon. Yet, dismissing these predictions as mere hype may not be helpful. Whatever their incentives, the researchers and engineers inside AI labs appear genuinely convinced they're witnessing the emergence of something unprecedented. Their certainty alone wouldn't matter - except that increasingly public benchmarks and demonstrations are beginning to hint at why they might believe we're approaching a fundamental shift in AI capabilities. The water, as it were, seems to be rising faster than expected.
