CONCEPT
AGI-ism
Morozov's 2023 term for the ideological formation driving the pursuit of artificial general intelligence — "the bastard child of a much grander ideology" that insists there is no alternative to market-driven technological optimization.
AGI-ism is the ideology that treats the development of artificial general intelligence as a self-evidently desirable goal, the pursuit of which requires no political justification because its benefits are presumed to be universal and its arrival is presumed to be inevitable. Morozov coined the term in his New York Times essay 'The True Threat of Artificial Intelligence' (2023), arguing that AGI-ism functions as a specific expression of a broader neoliberal framework that converts political questions into technical ones and insists, with Thatcherian finality, that no alternative to the current arrangement is available or desirable.
In The You On AI Field Guide
AGI-ism operates by presenting a specific corporate-technical project — the development of increasingly capable AI systems by a small number of venture-funded companies — as a stage in a universal process that transcends the interests of any particular actor. The framing evacuates the political specificity of the project. Who is building AGI? Which companies, with what funding, pursuing what objectives?