AI Summer School - The Road to AGI

Your weekly guide to getting the most out of generative AI tools

Author

Innovation Profs
August 15, 2025

Welcome to Gen AI Summer School

We’re spending the summer teaching you the essentials you need to succeed in an AI-forward world.

Here’s the plan (click the links to read past posts):

The Road to AGI

We often note that the generative AI tools we use will never be as bad as they are today. These tools are only going to give better results, with fewer hallucinations, as time goes on.

So, it’s important to have a vision for where generative AI is headed. One good way to visualize that is through the concepts of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI or simply superintelligence).

OpenAI’s charter defines AGI as highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work. In other words, not just a chatbot that writes code or summarizes documents, but a broadly capable system that generally does most jobs better than we do.

ASI is defined as future systems dramatically more capable than AGI, with potential to accelerate science and industry but also to create unprecedented risks.

OpenAI’s (Reported) Five Steps Toward AGI

OpenAI hasn’t published an official “five steps” framework on its site, but multiple outlets reported in July 2024 that the company is using five internal levels to track progress toward AGI. Think of them like “self-driving car levels,” but for general intelligence:

  1. Chatbots (Conversational AI) — fluent dialogue and task help via language.

  2. Reasoners — models that can solve problems at about a PhD level without tools.

  3. Agents — systems that can take actions on your behalf (click, call APIs, operate software).

  4. Innovators — AI that helps invent new ideas, methods, or designs.

  5. Organizations — AI that can effectively do the work of an entire organization.

Where are we now? We’re plausibly between Level 1 (chatbots) and Level 2 (reasoners), with early agentic tools (level 3) emerging but still short of stable, general, autonomous competence across domains.

OpenAI released its first reasoning model in Sept. 2024. OpenAI agent was released in mid-July 2025.

To get a better sense of current capabilities, we recommend giving Deep Research a try. Deep Research is available in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok and other AI tools.

Deep Research is a new class of AI “research agents” that do multi-step, source-backed investigation for you: they plan a strategy, browse the web, read dozens or hundreds of pages, and synthesize a documented report with citations.

What to watch for

From Chatbots → Reasoners (Step 2): Expect more models that “think longer,” show work, and solve complex math, code, and science tasks—paired with tighter evaluation to curb hallucinations.

Early Agents (Step 3): Expect safer, more reliable tool-using assistants that can operate apps and workflows with policy and oversight layers. (OpenAI emphasizes preparedness frameworks and product safety standards as capability grows.)

In summary

Timelines are all over the map for when we will reach either AGI or ASI. They range from the late-2020s to 2060s or later. Organizations should be planning for multiple future scenarios and start capturing value safely from the Reasoner/Agent era taking shape now. Two great ways to start are to attend our upcoming events below…

Upcoming Gen AI Events

Free Back to School Gen AI Update: Join us as we kick off the new school year with a free virtual overview of recent developments in generative artificial intelligence. This virtual event is free and open to the public, so sharpen your pencils and join the fun.

When: Monday, Aug. 25, 12-12:45 p.m. Central time
Where: Virtual event on Zoom
Sign up here.

Gen AI Boot Camp: Join us in-person at Drake University or virtually for our next Generative AI Boot Camp. This one-day workshop will get you up to speed and using generative AI tools effectively in your work.

When: Friday, Sept. 12, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Where: Drake University or on Zoom
Sign up here