Full title: Deep Hype in Artificial General Intelligence: Uncertainty, Sociotechnical Fictions and the Governance of AI Futures

Abstract:

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has emerged as one of the most ambitious frontiers
of the contemporary technology sector. Promoted by tech leaders and investors, AGI is
imagined as a system capable of performing all human intellectual tasks, and potentially
exceeding them. Despite lacking clear definition or technical feasibility, AGI has
attracted unprecedented levels of investment and political attention, driven by inflated
promises of civilisational transformation.

Based on a series of statements and documents from AGI leaders, this paper examines
how a multidimensional network of uncertainties sustains what is defined as deep hype:
a long-term, overpromissory dynamic that constructs visions of civilisational
transformation through a network of uncertainties extending into an undefined future,
making its promises nearly impossible to verify in the present, while maintaining
attention, investment, and belief. These uncertainties are articulated through
sociotechnical fictions: forms of mediated imagination produced within science and
technology but not recognised as such since they are sheltered with technoscientific
legitimacy. These fictions make not-yet-existing technologies intelligible and desirable,
generating surprise, urgency, and expectation.

The analysis shows how AGI deep hype is fuelled by the recursive interaction between
uncertainty, fiction, and venture capital speculation. This entanglement plays a key role
in advancing a cyberlibertarian and longtermist programme that displaces democratic
oversight, frames regulation as obsolete, and positions private actors as the rightful
stewards of humanity’s technological destiny. By observing the interplay of these
elements, this theoretical paper contributes to the field of hype studies and offers critical
insight into the governance of technological futures.