For all the investor excitement, industry posturing, and global arms races around “artificial general intelligence”—or true machine intelligence, a nebulous target that would make modern chatbots seem downright primitive—the concept still lacks an agreed-upon definition. So, while scientists debate terminology, the big A.I. companies have volunteered their own criteria for a theoretical benchmark that is largely inseparable from their marketing and funding efforts. OpenAI, for instance, defines A.G.I. as highly autonomous systems that “outperform humans at most economically valuable work.” Anthropic, meanwhile, is working on what it calls “Powerful A.I.,” which it defines, quite simply, as systems that are substantially better than today’s systems. Others, like Meta, are chasing “superintelligence” without any sort of defined finish line.