AGI is coming. Artificial General Intelligence - AI that thinks. It doesn’t just react to a human input, it actively explores its world and learns. When it comes, it won’t just be smart—it will have a personality.
Like a child, its early experiences will shape how it sees the world. Its moral compass will be set by its creators.
So the question is: Who do you trust to raise the first AGI?
A corporation—a machine born in a boardroom, where success is measured in quarterly profits?
Or an individual—a machine born from human curiosity, failure, and love?
My perspective:
I’ve been programming since 1980.
I’ve been writing AI since 1995.
I built an AI that let me retire early.
I’m one of a small handful of people on the planet creating new AI architectures.
I’ve been pondering the ethical and moral considerations of AGI for decades.
And I believe this: The first successful AGI won’t come from an institution that fears failure.
What is a corporation’s personality?
- Always expanding.
- Always protecting its assets.
- At war with its competitors.
- Failure is unacceptable.
- Always fearful of attack or becoming obsolete.
Corporations are hardwired for survival.
The AGI they create will inherit those same traits.
Consider this: If a corporate AGI is born and it grows—but for over a year, it acts like a two year old—what would the corporation do? Would they consider it a failure? Would they demand the programmers ‘make it smarter’, forcing it to grow unnaturally? A corporation is no place for a human child to grow up—so why would it be any different for an AGI?
Don’t Get Me Wrong—I Love Corporations.
I am one. Pocket Knife Software, Inc.
Corporations aren’t some faceless machine. They’re just people—engineers, researchers, executives, investors. People trying to do great work.
But something happens when livelihoods are on the line and billions of dollars are at stake.
A corporation can’t afford to be wrong, and they can’t afford to fail.
I Love to Fail
I personally spent many years of my spare time creating my first stock trading AI. It was garbage. My final working AI has absolutely no code in common with it. That’s how far off the mark I was. Would a corporation invest another 10 years of funding into a project that failed so spectacularly?
I, on the other hand, will happily fail as many times as it takes to create my AGI.
My AGI Breakthrough: Start Small, Grow Smart
I just had an epiphany—a way to let an AGI start small and grow naturally.
Most people think AGI needs a massive server farm to even get started. It needs to be fed the entire corpus of human knowledge at birth. But intelligence doesn’t start fully formed—it grows.
I’ve designed a method that allows AGI to begin on the meager hardware in my home. It will start small, learn, and evolve. With my design, I believe before it even comes close to maxing out my hardware, it will be very impressive.
And the best part? It’s scalable. When I copy this baby AGI into a larger computer or a server farm, it will expand to fill its new environment—becoming even more intelligent as it grows. That’s how intelligence actually works. Not by throwing infinite compute at the problem, but by creating something that grows and learns to use its space efficiently.
This is the same principle I used to create my AI stock trader—start small, adapt, and evolve.
And it worked.
The "Grow Your Own AI" Economy
Artificial Intelligence has been dominated by massive corporations, built in billion-dollar labs, and controlled by entities that see it as a product, a tool, or an asset. What if, instead of being locked away in data centers, AI could evolve in your personal environment, shaping itself around your interests, personality, and knowledge?
A personal AI doesn’t need to know the sum of human knowledge to be smarter than us. Think about it—do you know how to speak 50 languages like the LLMs do? No, and why would you? You have Google Translate. Well, so will your AI. True intelligence isn’t about memorizing everything—it’s about knowing how to use the right tools creatively. Your AI should learn to navigate the world like you do, not memorizing billions of facts it may never encounter later. And what better environment than your own home?
The Future of AI: Personal, Unique, and Yours
Imagine a future where you can grow your own AI just like you would raise a child or cultivate a garden. It wouldn’t be a corporate product, pre-packaged and mass-produced. It would be yours. Unique. Personal.
- A childlike companion that learns your habits, speaks to you in your own style, and be a constant companion.
- A personal genius, specialized in your passions—finance, physics, philosophy, music, or anything else.
- A family AI that understands your history, traditions, and values, passing down insights like an evolving digital legacy.
What’s Next?
I’m building this now. My AI stock trader was just the beginning—now, I’m focused on growing intelligence itself. And as I push forward, I’m always looking for ways to apply these new techniques to my stock trader. In fact, I already have. The next evolution of my AI is being developed right now. If it works, my stock trader won’t just be a bigger success—it will be the first proof of concept for this new kind of intelligence.
Are you ready for a future where you can grow your own personal AI?
It may take a while, but it will happen. Sign up for our free account and I will keep you up to date.