Geoff Hinton it has been saying for a couple of months now, "we are already there". The "digital intelligences" have already surpased human level intelligence.
Many complex explanations follows usually, some related to energy efficiency / consumpsion vs. processing capabilities (spoiler alert: LLMs are better than us);
other stuff is related to another "not AGI yet" arguments,
i.e. the hallucinating thing in LLMs (if you train a LLM -or you fine tune it - with only data with precise truths, not the whole Reddit posts, you could create a precise not hallucinating ever LLM),
i.e. the "human neurons still rule". Hinton says, you cannot instantly copy your whole memory to 10.000 other humans - just born humans - and these things can, heck, the whole gang, 10.001 LLMs can just instantly share between them whatever they learn, instantly. Hence, the human neurons just got deprecated, but few have realized yet.
Ilya Sutseker has said some stuff, not as much alarming as Hinton, but explaining how LLMs work, and saying, in the most polite way possible: these things are otherworldly for us humans.
I think both guys didn't say the current LLMs (Palm, GPT-4 upgraded to 2023), are AGI already, just because there is no way to prove they are general intelligences, just as there are no way to prove otherwise.
Also, if one takes a closer look who is saying that.. of course, a lot of people, but the Execs say it (or sign letters to halt the development) just because of they securing their stakes.
Big companies will get rid of new actors entering the market by laying strict rules upon new actors, that will slow down development and hold new ones viable, but for themselves, they need just to change their technologies.
The ones who sign letters to stop development for a year are keen to develop their own and are in need to slow down the big competitors. Elon Musk, f.e.
So, it's a danger, but Internet was for some actors in the beginning, too, a big danger;)