“The Software Century,” we argue that the current generation of spectacularly talented engineering minds has become unmoored from any sense of national purpose or grander and more meaningful project. These programmers retreated into the construction of their technical wonders. And wonders indeed have been built. The newest forms of artificial intelligence, known as large language models, have for the first time in history pointed to the possibility of artificial general intelligence—that is, a computing intellect that could rival that of the human mind when it comes to abstract reasoning and
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