Put Some Respect on My Name — Has AI Earned the Name Superintelligence?
Unbearably Bullish with Donald B. Johns III · Oct 16, 2026 · 20 min
Show Notes
Artificial intelligence wants a new title: Superintelligence. Before the nameplate goes up, it faces a qualification hearing and the five-part Respect Test.
Future Forward Friday #15
Artificial intelligence walks into a promotion ceremony asking for a new title: Superintelligence. Before the nameplate goes up, Donald holds a qualification hearing to ask whether the intelligence changed, or only the name.
In this episode
- Three floors: narrow AI, artificial general intelligence (AGI) and superintelligence, and why there is no agreed finish line for AGI.
- The five-part Respect Test: breadth, autonomy, discovery, self-improvement and verification.
- The mirror test: is AI becoming intelligent, or very good at reflecting human intelligence back to us?
- The AI assembly line: better AI helping build better AI, and the real-world limits of chips, power, data and human verification.
- Bull, bear and black swan: the productivity case, the risk of trusting a label before the reliability is proven, and low-probability, high-consequence outcomes.
- Eight futures and the verdict: a conditional promotion, pending evidence.
Educational and informational only. Not investment advice.
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