Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has emerged as the most ambitious frontier of the artificial intelligence industry, despite its conceptual ambiguity and the lack of consensus regarding its technical feasibility. This presentation introduces the concept of AGI deep hype: a form of long-term technological overpromising rooted in structural uncertainty and projections of civilisational transformation. Unlike conventional hype cycles, which revolve around short-term breakthroughs, deep hype sustains momentum by projecting unverifiable promises far into the future.
Building on the notion of sociotechnical fictions (mediated forms of imagination within technoscientific domains that help materialise non-existent technological assemblages) this presentation argues that AGI is a product of venture capital’s speculative imagination. This mode of imagination is future-oriented and market-driven: it anticipates returns, shapes emerging industries, and legitimises its interventions through the myth of technological inevitability. It functions as both a financial strategy and a moral narrative that frames private capital as the rightful guide to humanity’s future.
In its most powerful expressions, particularly among leading U.S. venture capitalists, this speculative drive is embedded in a broader ideological project shaped by cyberlibertarian and longtermist worldviews. These narratives position AGI development not just as an economic opportunity but as a moral imperative to safeguard humanity from existential risk.
Drawing from analysis of key academic, media, and policy discourses, the presentation identifies a series of interlinked arenas of uncertainty underpinning AGI deep hype, including conceptual, temporal, economic, geopolitical and moral, among others. By mapping these uncertainties, this presentation explains how AGI deep hype relies on sociotechnical fictions with significant performative agency, shaping both expectations and infrastructure, and ultimately redefining the contours of AI governance and technological possibility.
Sociologist of technology, design and imagination. Researcher at the Open University of Catalunya examining how technology, the future and finance instrumentalise fiction and uncertainty to advance oligarchic politics.
Co-founder of Hype Studies, an international collective investigating the politics and economics of technology hype. Lecturer in Science and Technology Studies, as well as critical and speculative design, across several design and cinema BA and MA programmes at the Open University of Catalunya, ELISAVA and ESCAC.
Artistic research available at engineering-fiction.org.