In just the past few days, multiple AI heavyweights have come out with bold new statements on artificial general intelligence (AGI)—and there are some parallels to Cold War nuclear strategies that are getting impossible to ignore.
OpenAI published a new safety and alignment memo that flat-out says it expects AGI to transform the world “within a few years,” potentially bringing bigger changes than humanity has seen from the 1500s until now—in just a few short years.
Anthropic, meanwhile, released its own approach to “powerful AI,” a term it uses interchangeably with AGI, predicting we could see this technology by late 2026 or early 2027.
And a new "Superintelligence Strategy" report coauthored by Dan Hendrycks (Center for AI Safety Director), Eric Schmidt (former Google CEO), and Alexandr Wang (Scale AI founder) takes it a step further, proposing an honest-to-goodness framework for AI deterrence modeled after Cold War nuclear doctrines.
In other words, everyone in the AI world seems to be saying:
“Get ready. This is about to get very real, very fast.”
What does that mean for you? I broke it down with Marketing AI Institute founder and CEO Paul Roetzer on Episode 139 of The Artificial Intelligence Show.
Why AGI? Why Now?
According to these latest announcements, the major players in AI all agree that we’re barreling toward super-capable AI. We’re talking about AI that could handle everything from advanced cybersecurity to—potentially—world-changing biotech research.
In fact, OpenAI comes right out and says:
"As AI becomes more powerful, the stakes grow higher. The exact way the post-AGI world will look is hard to predict—the world will likely be more different from today’s world than today’s is from the 1500s. But we expect the transformative impact of AGI to start within a few years."
Each organization has a different stance on exactly how we should handle this:
- OpenAI says safety actually requires gradual, real-world deployment of increasingly advanced models. If we keep everything in a lab under lock and key, we lose the opportunity to learn from how real users (and yes, real bad actors) might misuse or break these systems. This “iterative deployment” approach is front and center in its new publication.
- Anthropic doubles down on urgency. It calls for strategic preparedness from the US government—particularly around the national security risks that come with super-capable AI. The company believes “powerful AI” could become a reality within two to three years.
- The Superintelligence Strategy report (by Hendrycks, Schmidt, Wang) gets nuclear—literally. The authors outline “Mutual Assured AI Malfunction” (or, MAIM), an approach they compare directly to the old doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” from the atomic age. The idea? Any nation or entity that tries to dominate the superintelligence race risks sabotage from its rivals—mirroring the logic that kept nuclear superpowers in check.
It’s an intense set of predictions. And it has left many in the AI and tech communities…well, more than a little uneasy.
“This Is a Problem”
“This is a problem,” says Roetzer. “There is very dangerous territory ahead.”
Roetzer points out that the kind of national-security level threats these frameworks describe aren’t some distant sci-fi scenario. Every major AI lab and every major government knows foreign actors could be infiltrating their AI systems already. And if open-source or stolen AI models become advanced enough, then the power to disrupt economies or entire energy grids might no longer be limited to the big players.
As massive as these announcements are, Roetzer is quick to say that neither OpenAI, Anthropic, nor any other AI lab is going to single-handedly “solve” the big questions of a post-AGI world. It’s on governments, think tanks, industry associations, and every business to step up and figure out guardrails.
“They think that the next five years is so different, it’s basically like taking a leap forward 500 years,” he says.
“But the thing that’s very clear is they're not going to solve this. They're not going to sit down and play out ‘What does a post AGI world look like in education, in business, in your profession, your industry?’ They're not going to do it, which means it's on governments, think tanks, associations, individual businesses.”
The Road to AGI and Beyond Podcast Series
This is a gap that urgently needs to be addressed, says Roetzer.
That’s why he’s launching a new "Road to AGI and Beyond" podcast series starting March 27. It will run under the umbrella of The Artificial Intelligence Show—with a focus on what AGI means for real-world sectors like:
- Business (How do you plan for economic disruptions?)
- Education (Do we need to rewrite the entire curriculum?)
- Cybersecurity (How do we stop advanced AI from falling into the wrong hands?)
- Infrastructure (Can we handle AI-level demands on power grids?)
- Government (What’s the realistic policy path forward?)
- Future of Work (Which jobs transform and how fast?)
Roetzer says he’ll invite subject-matter experts to tackle each of these areas and provide frameworks on how to prepare.
Mike Kaput
As Chief Content Officer, Mike Kaput uses content marketing, marketing strategy, and marketing technology to grow and scale traffic, leads, and revenue for Marketing AI Institute. Mike is the co-author of Marketing Artificial Intelligence: AI, Marketing and the Future of Business (Matt Holt Books, 2022). See Mike's full bio.