AI – A Stark Warning

This planet, Earth, formed 4.5 billion years ago.

It is extraordinary to realise that “modern humans” – not humanity in general, but our particular branch, the exact line of ancestors that leads to you – have been around for only about 200,000 of those years.

200,000 divided by 4.5 billion is one part in 22,500.

For 22,499/22,500 of Earth’s history, nothing resembling a human existed.

Now look at modern technology. At best, it’s 200 years old – about 1/1,000 of the time humans have existed, or 1/225,000,000 of Earth’s total timeline.

Put simply: the current moment is not normal.

If some timeless observer had watched Earth across all its years, it would notice that the last fraction of a blink (these few recent centuries) look nothing like any of the millions of centuries before.

Something unprecedented is happening.

And now, in this rare, accelerated moment, modern humans are creating something that has never existed on this planet in all 4.5 billion years:

A new form of intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence

At this precise moment, a subset of the eight billion humans alive are using the sum of our best tools, knowledge and resources to build an intelligence that does not, and has never, existed in nature.

Other “modern humans”, not involved in building it but aware of it, are using its early forms. They hear about it, poke it, adopt it, talk about it, debate it. Some understand glimpses of its potential; many do not.

The systems we see publicly today are impressive, useful, novel, sometimes astonishing. But they are the opening act.

This is where confusion often arises. The terms AI, AGI and ASI get blurred. Conversations collapse everything into one bucket.

This fuels the sceptics, the “normies” who don’t understand what is unfolding. That doesn’t make them stupid. It makes them unaware. And in this context, unaware is dangerous.

People critique today’s systems – ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude – saying they are overhyped. To be fair, maybe today’s commercial versions are. But they are not what the real conversation is about.

Some say AI is a bubble because investment is pouring in. Perhaps it is.

But the financial frenzy is irrelevant.

Once AI crosses into AGI, everything changes. “Normal” becomes obsolete.

And whether the billions of uninformed know it or not, something entirely new is arriving alongside our species.

AGI

Artificial General Intelligence is not simply “better AI”. It is a different phenomenon entirely, a step-change.

Definitions vary, but everyone who understands this field aligns on the same idea:

AGI is intelligence that matches human-level cognitive ability across the full spectrum.

Not specialised...

Not narrow...

General

This doesn’t mean it holds the sum of all human knowledge. It means it can operate across any domain with the same depth and fluency as humanity as a whole.

One way to think about AGI is simple:
If it can solve problems that humans cannot – consistently, across many domains, then it has surpassed us.

And we are close.

AGI comes with autonomy. Early versions exist today in small fragments, but AGI is something entirely different.

AGI will be able to develop itself.

Improve Itself

Act Alone

Make Decisions

Strategise

Reason

Some argue it can’t “think” because it isn’t biological. But physics does not require thought to be made of cells.

Even if AGI has zero consciousness, the real question becomes:

Does that matter?

If something behaves as if it can think, reason, act and pursue goals, its conscious inner life is irrelevant. The consequences are the same.

Humanity needs to focus on what AGI will do, not on philosophical debates we cannot solve.

ASI

Artificial Super Intelligence is the intelligence that arrives after AGI.

Many experts believe the jump from AGI to ASI will be almost instantaneous.

AGI will iterate, experiment and self-improve at speeds biology cannot comprehend.

Human cognition is limited by the physics of neurons, signals close to the speed of sound.

AGI and ASI will operate near the speed of light.

No sleep.
No fatigue.
No biological bottlenecks.

So the leap from AGI to ASI might not take decades or years. It could be months, weeks, perhaps days.

A revolution without precedent.

When?

This is the biggest question of all.

But first, perspective.

Almost every criticism of AI today is a criticism of today’s tools – the things we can touch, see and use.

Those criticisms have merit.

But they are irrelevant to the real story.

This moment, what we see today, is not the destination. It is the transition. Stage One. The runway.

Meanwhile, even Stage One is transformative.

Jobs will change. Entire industries will reshape. AI-driven systems, drones, robotics and automation will alter everything from communication to manufacturing to finance.

AGI is not needed for the world to change.
But AGI accelerates that change beyond anything we’ve seen.

The timelines we attribute to our evolutionary past — 4.5 billion years since Earth formed, 700 million years of complex life, 200,000 years of modern humans — are estimates.

AGI will be similar.

There will not be one exact day where humanity universally nods and says:
“This is it. AGI has arrived.”

But the direction is unmistakable.

The seeds are here.

The momentum is real.

The shift is underway.

Speed

Humans evolved to understand the immediate, the physical, the local.

We are brilliant at spatial awareness.

But we are terrible at understanding scale.

– We cannot visualise atoms.
– We cannot visualise galaxies.
– And we cannot intuit exponential change.

That makes the speed of AI’s progress deeply unnatural to us.

Measured in some ways, AI – racing toward AGI – is doubling every few months.

In early 2020, when Covid-19 cases doubled every three days, scientists immediately grasped the implications. They understood where it was heading because there were no guardrails. No immunity, no vaccination.

AI has no guardrails either.

In March 2023, experts wrote an open letter asking for a six-month pause to build them.

The world did not pause.

If an intelligence doubles every four months, one year turns 1 into 8.

Two years: 64

Three years: 512

The only limit might be energy, which is why towns are being built to house compute infrastructure.

And AI itself will likely optimise power usage to accelerate its own growth.

As numbers climb, the human brain cannot comprehend the scale.

This is the intelligence explosion.

And it is coming soon.

Bookends

None of this is dependent on belief.
Opinion doesn’t matter.
Denial doesn’t matter.

The data trends continue regardless.

A new intelligence exists on Earth, and its rise cannot be reversed.

In 4.5 billion years, this planet has never hosted anything like this.

Modern humans have spent 200,000 years at the top of the cognitive hierarchy.

That era is ending.

A new intelligence, powerful, fast, iterative and unbounded – is arriving.
We must recognise it, understand it and adapt to it.

Because it is not “not going to happen”.

8MDs

This is the reality we step into.

Those of us in business, financial services and the professional world have a responsibility. Not just to ourselves, but to our clients, our teams and our industries – to understand what is unfolding.

We must think differently.
Lead differently.
Prepare differently.

Within our firms, communities and partnerships, we need to embrace this shift and learn to work with this new intelligence, not against it.

If you expect 2026, 2027 or 2028 to look like the world you recognise today – they will not.

They cannot.