The AGI Lie Won't Die

In partnership with

Start learning AI in 2025

Everyone talks about AI, but no one has the time to learn it. So, we found the easiest way to learn AI in as little time as possible: The Rundown AI.

It's a free AI newsletter that keeps you up-to-date on the latest AI news, and teaches you how to apply it in just 5 minutes a day.

Plus, complete the quiz after signing up and they’ll recommend the best AI tools, guides, and courses – tailored to your needs.

Sign up to start learning.

Hello everyone and welcome to my newsletter where I discuss real-world skills needed for the top data jobs. 👏

In this article I’ll be dismantling the grift that is AGI. 👀

Not a subscriber? Join the informed. Over 200K people read my content monthly.

Thank you. 🎉

It’s hard to find a clear definition of what AGI is. The acronym is Artificial General Intelligence.

Here’s what ChatGPT had to say: A type of artificial intelligence that can understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a wide range of tasks, just like a human.

Here’s what Gemini had to say: Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), often referred to as "human-level AI" or "strong AI," is a theoretical type of artificial intelligence that would possess cognitive abilities comparable to those of a human being.

We have two definitions we can work with. Pick one, it doesn’t matter. Before we dig into the neurocomputational beat down of AGI, let’s understand why the lie is so strong. It’s a great lie that plays on two contradictory fears.

Utopian Salvation: 

AGI will solve climate change, end disease, cure the common cold. Elon Musk said we won’t need a universal basic income, there will be so much prosperity we will have a universal high income.

Apocalyptic Doom: 

AGI will enslave us, Terminator-style, and harvest our organs to fuel its servers. I’m more worried about the last one because I’m a large man with few extra pounds, the perfect specimen for a human fuel cell.

Fact-based news without bias awaits. Make 1440 your choice today.

Overwhelmed by biased news? Cut through the clutter and get straight facts with your daily 1440 digest. From politics to sports, join millions who start their day informed.

Sign up now!

If you work in any Ai role, you know that all the top models are glorified pattern predictors, chewing through massive datasets with brute force, not insight. Currently, the top machine learning models do nothing more than find patterns really well.

What’s more powerful than anything are belief systems. How many have died throughout history in the name of religion? Business learned this a long time ago. If you can convince a large enough group of people something is going to happen, they will throw money at it. 

I might have veered off topic for a second. Let’s refocus and talk about the numbers.

The human brain has around 86 billion neurons. These 86 billion neurons, 1⁰¹⁶ to 1⁰¹⁸ FLOPS, use around 20 watts of power. No bad. 👏

One of the world’s top super computer, the frontier supercomputer, stands around ~1⁰¹⁸ FLOPS, needs 20 million watts. This means that even our best supercomputer, well, one that we know about at least, is a million times less efficient. 😯

It’s get worse for the machine. Neurons don’t just fire off ones and zeroes like transistors in chips. They’re doing something far more elegant. They modulate their signals, processing information both electrically and chemically at the same time. The brain is a hybrid analog-digital system, which is far more advanced than we’ve already defined the world’s top models are. 

A little more about the math angle. The FLOPS for a neuron is between 116,000 and 11.6 million, depending on the complexity of the activity it's performing. Energy-wise, our brains work at the level of 86 billion neurons using 20 watts.

The Frontier Supercomputer can do the same, more or less, level of FLOPS per second as one of our neurons and needs 100 million times more energy, and it cannot do it consciously.

If Roger Penrose and a few of his colleagues are right, and that the brain’s microtubules, tiny structures within neurons operate at the quantum level, performing computations far beyond classical physics, then we move to something impossible for any current computer to model. 

As an aside, I find it comical that we talk of computers that can cogitate similarly to how we can, yet we don’t truly understand how we cogitate. 😂

Until a computer has the capacity to compete in terms of processing power, all these discussion are just thought exercises.

Consciousness cannot be reduced to computation alone. The brain is not just a computer, and intelligence isn’t just about processing information.

Machine learning models can do incredible things. However, they will never be conscious. It won’t truly and properly understand. And it definitely won’t save us from ourselves.

Thanks for reading and have a great day. 👏

SQL Server Hyper Focus is ready. The first and currently only customized GPT to help you learn SQL Server interactively. SQL is the top skills for every data role. SQL Server is one of the top relational databases. You must know the basics. Once you purchase the GPT, simply add it to your ChatGPT PLUS environment.

⚠️ You will need the plus version of GhatGPT. That’s not included in the price of the GPT.

Below is the model alone. This does not include access to all of the other courses.

🥳 The cost of the GPT is $39. However, I’ll knock that down to $19 for the first 20 readers. Simply use this code at checkout: maynewsletter2025

Download it Now

Here’s the prompt you’ll use to get started. After you install SSHF, just issue this prompt and get started learning. 👇

please create a course outline for SSHF

The goal is simple. Understand and recall every single statement from the course. It should take you a month or two. If you don’t understand anything, ask the model. The model has been designed to tell you my answers first, then use all of its resources to fill in the gaps.

Use the model capabilities. If you’re new to SQL Server, there’s a difference between TRUNCATE and DELETE. Here’s the prompt for you. 👇

please discuss the difference between DELETE and TRUNCATE

It’s like a NULL value. One of the most asked SQL Server questions of all time.

Have a great day. Stay focused. Stay hyper focused. 👏