For the last 12 to 15 years, people have claimed AGI is just around the corner and have been systematically wrong.

Two parts are tested as of 2024-03-08: (a) over roughly 2009–2024, prominent researchers, executives or commentators publicly said that AGI or human-level AI was imminent ("just around the corner", within a few years); (b) those predictions have repeatedly failed, meaning predicted dates passed by March 2024 without AGI arriving. True: documented, dated examples of such near-term AGI predictions from across that span, several with deadlines that had passed without AGI by March 2024. Mostly true: the pattern holds but the examples cluster in a narrower window than 12–15 years, or only a few of them had passed their deadlines by then. Mixed: imminent-AGI claims are documented, but most of them had deadlines still in the future in March 2024, so "systematically wrong" is mostly unsupported. Mostly false: such predictions were rare or fringe, so the claim overstates a few isolated statements. False: there is no record of imminent-AGI claims in that period, or AGI by a common definition had arrived by March 2024. Unresolved claims about whether AGI is near now are not themselves evidence either way.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Shane Legg | AI Wiki AI Wiki (aiwiki.ai) · 20 May 2026

   “In December 2009 he wrote on his vetta.org blog that his prediction "for the last 10 years has been for roughly human level AGI in the year 2025", and in the same post he made it quantitative, with a mode of about 2025, an expected value of 2028 and a 90% credibility region of 2018 to 2036.”

2. E2 Shane Legg | AI Wiki AI Wiki (aiwiki.ai) · 20 May 2026

   “Cumulative probability of human-level AGI: roughly 10% by 2018, 50% by 2028, 90% by 2050.”

3. E3 Shane Legg | AI Wiki AI Wiki (aiwiki.ai) · 20 May 2026

   “In the same post he predicted that he would expect to see an impressive proto-AGI within the next eight years, defining the milestone informally as a system with basic vision, sound processing, motor control, and language abilities”

4. E4 Shane Legg | AI Wiki AI Wiki (aiwiki.ai) · 20 May 2026

   “Twelve years later, in a long-form podcast interview with Dwarkesh Patel published on 26 October 2023, Legg explicitly reaffirmed the 2011 distribution: "I think there's a 50% chance that we have AGI by 2028."”

5. E5 Shane Legg | AI Wiki AI Wiki (aiwiki.ai) · 20 May 2026

   “In December 2009 he wrote on his vetta.org blog that his prediction "for the last 10 years has been for roughly human level AGI in the year 2025", and in the same post he made it quantitative, with a mode of about 2025, an expected value of 2028 and a 90% credibility region of 2018 to 2036.”

6. E6 Shane Legg | AI Wiki AI Wiki (aiwiki.ai) · 20 May 2026

   “The most cited statement of his view is the year-end post on his vetta.org blog titled "Goodbye 2011, hello 2012", published on 31 December 2011, in which Legg restated the prediction unchanged: "I give it a log-normal distribution with a mean of 2028 and a mode of 2025, under the assumption that nothing crazy happens like a nuclear war."”

7. E7 Shane Legg | AI Wiki AI Wiki (aiwiki.ai) · 20 May 2026

   “In the same post he predicted that he would expect to see an impressive proto-AGI within the next eight years”

8. E8 Shane Legg | AI Wiki AI Wiki (aiwiki.ai) · 20 May 2026

   “Twelve years later, in a long-form podcast interview with Dwarkesh Patel published on 26 October 2023, Legg explicitly reaffirmed the 2011 distribution: "I think there's a 50% chance that we have AGI by 2028."”

9. E9 Elon Musk claims AI will overtake humans 'in less than five years' The Independent · 27 July 2020

   “We’re headed toward a situation where AI is vastly smarter than humans and I think that time frame is less than five years from now.”

10. E10 Elon Musk claims AI will overtake humans 'in less than five years' The Independent · 27 July 2020

    “Mr Musk, whose ventures include electric car maker Tesla and space firm SpaceX, said in an interview with The New York Times that current trends suggest AI could overtake humans by 2025.”

11. E11 2016 Expert Survey on Progress in AI [AI Impacts Wiki] AI Impacts · 14 December 2016

    “in the other surveys we know of, the median dates for a 50% chance of something like High-Level Machine Intelligence (HLMI) range from 2035 to 2050.”

12. E12 Surveys on fractional progress towards HLAI AI Impacts · 14 April 2020

    “36 years (2056), based on all responses collected in the 2016 Expert Survey on Progress in AI.”

The evidence documents near-term AGI predictions made during the period. Shane Legg's 2009 and 2011 blog forecasts put human-level AGI at a mode of 2025 and a mean of 2028, and he restated them in 2023 (E1, E4, E6). Elon Musk said in 2020 that AI would overtake humans in less than five years, around 2025 (E9, E10). None of those target dates had passed by March 2024. Legg's 10%-by-2018 figure was a probability, not a firm prediction (E2). His eight-year proto-AGI forecast was made in a blog post that the quoted text does not date, so its end date cannot be fixed from the evidence, and the evidence does not say whether the milestone was met (E3, E7). Earlier expert surveys put the median 50% date for human-level machine intelligence at 2035–2050 (E11), and an extrapolation of 2016 survey responses on how much progress has been made gives 2056 (E12). So imminent-AGI claims are documented, but the evidence shows few deadlines that had clearly passed and failed, and it does not support "systematically wrong."