I’m inclined to think the reason is that too many people now associate “AI” with “slop”, so AGI is the favored buzzword to make AI sound like it’s going to places of unimaginable potential, instead of hitting the ceiling of infrastructure limitations that could take decades of careful research to overcome and which won’t be overcome simply by throwing more environment-eating data centers at the problem.

In a word: grift.

They’re in deep and AI being a specialized tool that gets reduced in environmental cost over time will not suit their desires for industry dominance. Luckily, China exists and we’re not dependent on these western capitalist grifters to define the entire landscape of large-scale AI.