Artificial General Intelligence is Not Here, but Could be "Close," (for Such a Major Technology)

How far away is artificial general intelligence? Further away than many now claim, says Google DeepMind CEO Dennis Hassabis. But some might take heart that he estimates we might actually get to AGI in five to 10 years.

For many technology watchers, that would be a breathtakingly fast development for something as sophisticated as AGI.

Granted, "how long" it takes any new technology to develop depends on how we choose to set the "start" date. Optimists might take a shorter view; pessimists might include lots of seminal research in the broader AI field to see the "start" date. 

And then there is the matter of the degree of deployment or use that qualifies as the commercial arrival date. What percentage of humans have to use AGI regularly to allow us to claim commercial deployment at some reasonable scale?