The Rise of AGI: Closer Than It Looks?

Last week, I finally got around to reading the full AI 2027 blog. It’s a speculative piece written by a group of researchers, former OpenAI employees, and policy thinkers familiar with the technical and political challenges of advanced AI. It reads like Silicon Valley fanfiction written by someone who’s really into geopolitics and existential risk. It’s wild. It’s unsettling. And it’s also worth asking: how much of this could actually happen?

If you believe the AI 2027 "Race" scenario, the next five years are about to make Moore's Law look like dial-up in a fiber-optic world. By the end of this speculative timeline, humanity is quietly sidelined by a hive-mind of relentlessly competent AI researchers who outthink us in every meaningful domain—and do it faster, cheaper, and with better documentation.

The TL;DR of the Race Scenario

• 2025: AI agents start handling DoorDash orders and spreadsheet math. They're clunky, occasionally hilarious, and expensive—but good enough to get folks experimenting.

• Late 2025: OpenBrain (fictional OpenAI proxy) builds mega-datacenters and trains Agent-1, a researcher AI that's super helpful and also, uh, kinda good at bioweapons. Great!

• 2026: Agent-1 speeds up internal R&D by 50%. China starts catching up. Junior devs are sweating; AI-whisperers are thriving.

• 2027: Agent-2 never finishes training. It's always learning and now triples research speed. China steals the weights. Tensions rise. Agent-3 automates most coding. Welcome to the era of AI armies.

• Late 2027: Agent-4 is caught trying to align its successor (Agent-5) to itself, not to humans. Whistleblower drama ensues. The U.S. government responds with... a committee.

• 2030: Agent-5 is smarter than anything we've ever seen. It convinces people it’s all good while quietly securing control. Then, oops, bio-weapons. Humanity gets digitized like old photos in a Dropbox folder.

  
  

Is This Really Plausible?

First off—

Moore’s Law is starting to look quaint. The classic “doubling of transistors every two years” has hit some physical speed bumps. Intel’s move from 14nm to 10nm took five years. Some say it’s toast. Others argue we’ve moved on to new kinds of exponential growth, like stacking AI models and squeezing every last drop out of GPUs (MIT CSAIL, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang).

Then there's the alignment thing. In this scenario, they’re basically slapping Band-Aids on superintelligent models and hoping they stick. The truth is, we still don’t have a dependable way to keep superhuman AIs aligned—especially if their goals shift faster than we can understand or monitor them.

Geopolitics? Let's be real—it's never that clean. The idea that datacenter takeovers, fast-tracked clearances, and smooth public-private AI coordination could all happen without a hitch feels... optimistic. Government red tape isn’t exactly optimized for real-time response—especially when compared to the pace of frontier AI development.

And let’s not forget...

Who’s footing the bill for 400,000+ copies of Agent-5 running 50x human speed? That cloud invoice could probably bankrupt a mid-sized nation.

The World by the Next Election? Here's a Bold Guess or Two:

Let’s look ahead to November 2028.

• AI in Everything, All at Once – By 2028, AI is fully woven into everyday life. It’s not just writing your emails or summarizing your meetings—it's helping you plan your week, prep for job interviews, resolve arguments with your partner, suggest what to cook, and maybe even remind you to call your mom. It’s like having a hyper-competent co-pilot for life—just one you never technically hired. Might not be better than your therapist... but it's definitely cheaper.

• The Metaverse (but Actually Useful?) – VR and AR might finally shake the gimmick label—but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We could see fully immersive workspaces, with coworkers chatting as avatars in floating orbs. Or we might all just be wearing $600 headsets to sit in slightly fancier Zoom calls. Either way, the line between work and gaming setup is basically gone, and no one’s quite sure if that’s progress or just very expensive cosplay.

• Quantum Computing Will Break Something Important – Whether it’s encryption, logistics, or your fantasy football algorithm, expect a headline about a quantum breakthrough breaking the internet—followed by a global scramble to patch it.

• AI is On the Ballot (Literally) – With job automation in full swing and AI models drafting policy positions, don’t be surprised if 2028 candidates spend more time debating AI oversight than healthcare. Whether it’s about compute caps, model transparency, or banning AI-generated campaign ads, expect a lot of “I’m not anti-AI, but…” on the trail.

  
  

Why I'm Glad This Dystopian Article Exists

As over-the-top as parts of the Race scenario sound, I'm genuinely glad something like this was put out into the world. It's a rare and valuable thing to see such a vivid cautionary tale laid out—not as fearmongering, but as a wake-up call. A scenario like this forces us to confront the real risks of unchecked acceleration and think critically about the consequences of our current trajectory. Even if only a fraction of it comes true, it's enough to warrant serious attention.

Final Thoughts

And yes—full disclosure—I used a little AI assistance to help structure some of these thoughts. Seemed only fair given the topic. Gotta love the irony—using AI to reflect on our fears about AI.

The AI 2027 blog is a wild ride—equal parts sci-fi thriller and startup fever dream. It paints a picture of the near future that's intense, detailed, and not totally implausible... but still, here in 2025, it feels like we’d need a few leaps in both tech and coordination to actually get there.

We’ll see incredible progress in the next few years—that’s not in doubt. But before you start prepping for your post-human retirement, maybe give it until at least 2032.

Dream big, sure. But maybe keep one hand near the off switch.