The air crackled with anticipation. It was supposed to be the dawn of a new era, the moment humanity ceded its intellectual throne. Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI, the mythical beast of Silicon Valley, was just around the corner, or so everyone believed. Billions poured into research, startups promised revolutionary breakthroughs, and the media breathlessly reported every incremental advance as a giant leap. But somewhere along the line, the pursuit of AGI morphed from a scientific endeavor into something…else. Something darker.

The promise of AGI – a machine capable of understanding, learning, and applying knowledge across a wide range of tasks, just like a human – had always been intoxicating. It fueled science fiction for decades, inspiring both utopian dreams and dystopian nightmares. In the early 2020s, the dream seemed within reach. Deep learning models were mastering complex games, generating realistic images, and even writing passable prose. The tech world, flush with cash and convinced of its own infallibility, declared AGI inevitable.

This fervent belief, fueled by charismatic CEOs and amplified by a hungry media ecosystem, created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Companies raced to claim AGI was imminent, attracting investment and talent. Researchers, under pressure to deliver, often overhyped their results. The line between genuine progress and marketing spin blurred.

"It became a kind of gold rush," explains Will Douglas Heaven, author of the exclusive subscriber-only eBook, "How AGI Became a Consequential Conspiracy Theory." "The term 'AGI' was thrown around so casually that it lost all meaning. It became a buzzword, a marketing tool, a way to attract funding, regardless of whether the underlying technology actually justified the claim."

Heaven's eBook, available only to subscribers, delves into the fascinating and unsettling story of how the pursuit of AGI became entangled with conspiracy thinking. It argues that the relentless hype surrounding AGI, coupled with a lack of transparency and accountability, created fertile ground for distrust and skepticism.

The "Great AGI Conspiracy," as Heaven terms it, isn't about shadowy figures plotting in secret rooms. Instead, it's a more insidious phenomenon: a collective delusion driven by economic incentives, technological hubris, and a deep-seated desire to believe in the transformative power of AI. This delusion manifested in several ways. First, the goalposts for AGI kept shifting. As AI systems achieved specific tasks, proponents simply redefined AGI to be something even more ambitious, ensuring it remained perpetually out of reach. Second, dissenting voices were often marginalized or dismissed as Luddites. Anyone questioning the inevitability of AGI risked being labeled as anti-progress.

The consequences of this "AGI-pilled" Silicon Valley mindset are far-reaching. It has distorted research priorities, diverting resources away from more pressing societal needs. It has fueled unrealistic expectations about the capabilities of AI, leading to disappointment and disillusionment. And, perhaps most worryingly, it has eroded public trust in science and technology.

The "AI hype correction of 2025," as Heaven calls it in a related article, marked a turning point. The limitations of current AI systems became increasingly apparent. The promised AGI revolution failed to materialize. Investors grew wary, and the media began to scrutinize the claims of AI companies more critically.

But the damage was done. The belief in AGI, once a source of optimism and innovation, had become a breeding ground for skepticism and distrust. As Heaven's eBook explores, the challenge now is to rebuild that trust, to foster a more realistic and responsible approach to AI development, and to ensure that the pursuit of artificial intelligence serves humanity, rather than the other way around. The future of AI depends on our ability to learn from the mistakes of the past and to resist the seductive allure of the AGI conspiracy.