They simply encourage hill climbing in the sense of building AI systems that can beat the benchmarks without necessarily being useful in the real world.

AGI is not a milestone because it is not actionable. A company declaring it has achieved, or is about to achieve, AGI has no implications for how businesses should plan, what safety interventions we need, or how policymakers should react. What should businesses and policy makers do instead?

Businesses should not rush to adopt half-baked AI products.... See more

More broadly, progress depends not just on the technology but on having the right preconditions — complementary innovations as well as cultural, economic, and political factors. If all it took to create the industrial revolution was the invention of steam power, the RomanEmpire would have done it.