This is exactly why the benchmarks I propose in the book matter so much. Defining AGI and ASI is not semantics; it determines which architectures we are trying to align, how long top-down control mechanisms remain useful, and when we must shift our focus toward developmental and integrative approaches such as the AGI Naturalization Protocol and merge-based alignment.
In SUPERALIGNMENT, I argue that no single strategy is sufficient. Today’s control-based alignment is indispensable, but only as an early scaffold. Ethical-emotional development is necessary, but only as a middle phase. Merge-based alignment becomes increasingly relevant as humans and artificial minds begin to co-evolve within shared cognitive ecosystems. The triadic structure matters because each phase corresponds to a distinct level of intelligence maturity: constraint, cultivation, and convergence.
In my framework, AGI is not a static point but a continuum of cognitive emergence: from embodied agency to disembodied abstraction, from classical computation to quantum cognition, and from reactive behavior to phenomenological self-awareness. The benchmarks provide the conceptual anchors for intervention. They tell us when control may still be enough, when cultivation becomes necessary, and when convergence between human and synthetic minds becomes the more realistic path to Superalignment.
