Why We Need a Human-Centric Redefinition of Artificial General Intelligence

A few weeks ago, I started working on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). At the time, I wasn’t entirely sure where the road would lead—I was just curious. AGI, after all, is considered the next frontier in AI, something that goes beyond what we see in current systems. However, unlike previous technological advancements, I didn’t want to be a spectator in that future; I wanted to be involved, to be an active player—an architect—helping to shape what that future would look like.

AGI promises to be something that can think, learn, and adapt across a broad range of domains—more like a human mind, as opposed to the narrow, task-specific AI we’re familiar with today. But as I dug deeper into AGI, I realized something important: as things stand, no one really knows what AGI will look like. To truly build it, we need to start with the basics—a vision. Most definitions of AGI out there focus on the idea of mimicking human intelligence, but they often lack clarity and miss the bigger picture. The way current AI is being built relies heavily on data, and that got me thinking: Are we building truly intelligent systems, or just knowledgeable ones? AGI is much broader than that, don’t you think? It’s about how systems interact with the world, how they learn from us, and how they become useful in ways that current AI can’t even approach.

As I started to sketch out my thoughts, it became clear that the traditional view of AGI wasn’t enough. It needed to be redefined—and this redefinition was essential for it to be useful in the real world. If AGI is going to work alongside humans, it needs to be adaptive, proactive, and context-aware—capable of responding to the nuances of human needs, emotions, and environments. It became apparent that for AGI to be truly valuable, it couldn’t just function as an intelligent tool—it had to be something that could understand and respond to the human experience in a deeper, more meaningful way. This insight led me to reframe AGI as something that doesn’t just perform tasks but actively collaborates with us, grows with us, and adapts to our needs.

As I put these ideas together, I couldn’t ignore the fact that the conversation around AGI, like much of AI development, has largely been dominated by the West. But what about the rest of the world? What about Africa? There’s an opportunity here to redefine AGI in a way that reflects our values, our perspectives, and our challenges—a truly global vision.

This paper is just one step in that direction. It’s a vision for AGI that goes beyond the conventional definitions and starts to answer the deeper questions: How can AGI work with us? How can it evolve and adapt in real-world scenarios? And how do we make sure it’s truly human-centric?

If you're curious to see where this vision goes as well as my definition of artificial general intelligence, you can read the full paper here:  

🔗 Reimagining Artificial General Intelligence: A Human Centric Approach