Link: https://rdcu.be/frrB6 (This gives you access to a free read-only version. Not sure how long it lasts.)

This is the result of 34 years of thinking about this subject (or ancillary and ancestral versions of it), ever since I was a work study in the basement of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. I think your best experience of it will come from reading it in the voice of Ewen McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi at the end of Revenge of the Sith, shouting, “YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE!!!”

With recent advances in generative AI models and their adoption by many commercial users, there has been wider discussion of the possibility that artificial general intelligence (AGI) will emerge from these systems in the near future. This discussion is muddled somewhat by conflicting conceptions of AGI and what successful trials imply. I argue for the necessity of certain social features in any system that can be ascribed general intelligence. Much of the discussion thus turns to theory of mind and attempts to model this with generative AI. These features are particularly important for a type of epistemic responsibility that has proven especially thorny for generative AI models, and I argue that the current generation of systems will not scale towards success on these fronts. While this is not an a priori dismissal of the very possibility of artificial intelligence, it implies a need to radically rethink future approaches.

“LLMs, Epistemic Responsibility, and the Prospects for AGI.” Minds and Machines, 36, article 35, published online 01 July 2026. DOI:10.1007/s11023-026-09790-z