In June 2025, Hassabis and Pichai said almost the same thing at nearly the same time: AGI will arrive before 2030.

These two aren’t selling dreams. One leads DeepMind, holding the technical path closest to general intelligence; the other is Google’s CEO. When they rarely provide explicit timelines, this isn’t prediction—it’s more like confirmation of internal progress. For those who’ve been tracking AI development, this timeline isn’t surprising. The question worth asking isn’t “Will AGI come?” but rather—when it does, what do you plan to do with yourself?

We Never Stood Opposite Machines

I deeply appreciate Kevin Kelly’s worldview. If we use his framework to examine this, the answer is actually clear: humans have never stood opposite their tools. From stone implements, writing, printing presses to the internet, with each technological leap, we evolved alongside our tools. We shaped them, and they shaped us in return. AGI isn’t the end of this story—it’s a new chapter. Yet many people remain stuck in the “humans vs. AI” binary opposition. This contest ended the moment GPT appeared—we cannot possibly win against machines on dimensions like memory, computation, and knowledge retrieval. But this was never the battle we should have been fighting.

What we should do is learn to dance with this new species. Treat AI as an omniscient intern who needs clear instructions. Hand over repetitive, knowledge-based work to it, then spend your time on higher-level pursuits.

My own experience has been that since making Claude my daily collaborator, the time I’ve saved hasn’t made me more relaxed—it’s forced me to confront a more fundamental question: if machines can do all these things, where exactly should I focus my energy?

This question deserves more serious attention than any technological trend.

When All Answers Are Within Reach, Value Lies in Asking Questions

Karpathy introduced a precise metaphor in 2024: “Jagged Intelligence,” which Pichai later referenced. AI currently performs extraordinarily at the peaks of facts and logic, yet stumbles in the valleys of common sense and understanding. But these jagged edges will gradually be smoothed out.

When AI can answer almost any question (which isn’t far off)—where is human value?

In asking the question that hasn’t yet been asked.

A good question springs from curiosity, empathy, personal experience, and unique values. AGI can synthesize the content of ten thousand books, but it lacks your childhood memories of watching fireflies in the countryside, your heartbreak, your complex love for this imperfect world.

These are the wellsprings of great questions.

While everyone asks “What will AI do?” the better question is “What do I want to do with AI?” This difference seems minor, yet it’s the vast gulf between active and passive. Being an AI user versus being a bystander pushed along by AI—the choice has always been in your hands.

Invest in Capabilities That Cannot Be Quantified

AI’s learning foundation is data. Everything that can be digitized, recorded, and quantified will eventually be learned by AI. So what can’t it learn?

  1. Embodied wisdom. Pottery, woodworking, gardening, cooking—skills requiring touch, intuition, and bodily memory are AI’s weak spots. These aren’t just for pleasure; they train the non-linguistic, non-analytical parts of the brain. Zen’s teaching of “mind-body unity” becomes the most cutting-edge survival strategy in the AGI era.

  2. Genuine human connection. In a world surrounded by screens and virtual avatars, the ability to provide others with warmth, trust, and belonging becomes immensely precious. Leadership, empathy, face-to-face communication—these aren’t soft skills, they’re the hardest currency in the AI age.

  3. Cross-disciplinary creativity. For instance, combining art with engineering, or philosophy with business. AGI might generate a Van Gogh-style painting, but it cannot possess Van Gogh’s life experience, nor pioneer an entirely new artistic movement. True innovation comes from your unique life experiences and perspectives.

The value of these capabilities isn’t that they “cannot be replaced by AI”—such defensive thinking is too negative. Their value lies in making us more “human.” When efficiency is no longer the sole pursuit, when productivity is vastly enhanced by AI, human meaning will return to experience, feeling, and creating beauty—these essentials.

The Only Skill That Won’t Become Obsolete

AGI’s arrival means the half-life of knowledge will rapidly shrink. Professional skills you learn today might become irrelevant in five years. The only skill that won’t become obsolete is learning how to learn.

Become comfortable with being in a state of “knowing nothing,” and feel excited rather than anxious about it. AGI will be our best learning partner—it can create customized learning paths and explain complex concepts. But the key to starting the learning engine—curiosity and humility—must be grasped by ourselves.

Zen’s concept of “beginner’s mind” is particularly relevant here: maintaining the freshness and openness of first contact every time you face something new. In the AGI era, this mindset is no longer philosophical cultivation but a survival necessity.

AGI is a Mirror

When AI handles most information processing and decision-making, humanity’s most unique capability is “meaning-making.” The same data, the same events will have different interpretations and emotional resonance for different people. AI can analyze a song’s chord progressions and rhythmic patterns, but only you can say why this song reminds you of a particular summer with someone special. AI can calculate the most efficient urban planning, but only residents can define what “livable” means. Subjective meaning construction is the very foundation of human civilization.

Hassabis speaks of using AI to help humans colonize the galaxy. This isn’t science fiction—it’s an expansion of our thinking framework. AGI’s arrival has the most powerful effect of forcing us to consider: as humans, what do we actually want to do?

When machines take on almost all “work,” we will be liberated to pursue our “calling.”

So don’t worry about whether your job will be replaced. Worry instead about this—if you have the world’s smartest partner, but you don’t know where to take it or what questions to ask it.

AGI is a mirror that reflects not our obsolescence, but our eternal and unique core value as humans. Technological progress was never meant to make humans redundant, but to make humans more human. Start polishing that mirror now. Let it reflect a deeper, more complete you when 2030 arrives.

Source: Fortune, “2030 will be ‘an era of maximum human flourishing, where we travel to the stars and colonize the galaxy,’ Google DeepMind CEO says.” (2025/06/06)