About whether Microsoft's "Sparks of AGI" paper shows GPT-4 nearing general intelligence.
Has this happened?
Yes 60 (51%)Not sure 34 (29%)No 23 (20%)
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?
About whether Microsoft's "Sparks of AGI" paper shows GPT-4 nearing general intelligence.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
I read that pre-print Microsoft paper. Despite the title, it doesn't actually show any real "sparks" of AGI (in the sense of something that could eventually pass a rigorous Turing test). What the paper actually shows is that even intelligent people have a bias towards perceiving patterns in randomness; our brains seem to be wired that way and this is likely the source of most superstition.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712
While there is no scientific evidence that LLMs can reach AGI, they will still be practically useful for many other tasks. A human mind paired with an LLM is a powerful combination.