The most interesting thing in this whole picture is not AGI, it's how the collective intelligence works. CEOs claim the AGI is near because that's how they manipulate the public. But the public knows that it's only a manipulation. So how come the manipulation is still possible?

Sunk cost fallacy? What percentage of the public has actually invested the billions/trillions and is now demanding something to show for it? I'm not sure the average joe wants copilot in their outlook, but sure as hell someone wants it in there

because people hedge their bets almost always. basically how likely something is vs costs vs what everybody else is doing vs how you are personally affected.

So in case of the current AI there are several scenarios where you have to react to it. For example as a CEO of a company that would benefit from AI you need to demonstrate you are doing something or you get attacked for not doing enough.

As a CEO of an AI producing company you have almost no idea if the stuff you working on will be the thing that say makes hallucination-free LLMs, allows for cheap long term context integration or even "solve AGI". you have to pretend that you are just about to do the latter tho.

Bots and paid trolls online pushing a narrative.

With a whole manual of rhetorical tactics.

Because "the public" isn't one person or even one cohesive group. Some see the manipulation, and point it out. Others don't see it, or ignore it when it's pointed out.

And why ignore it? Because they don't want to believe it's manipulation, because it promises large numbers of dollars, and they want to believe that those are real.