Developers Don’t Need AGI — We Need Aligned Intelligence

AI headlines keep getting louder. Every few months, a new model is declared “almost AGI” or “approaching general intelligence.” As developers, we’ve seen this pattern before. Big claims. Bigger funding rounds. And vague definitions. It’s time to slow down and ask a practical question: what does “general intelligence” even mean in real systems? Because in production environments, intelligence isn’t measured by hype. It’s measured by reliability, clarity, and controllability. And that’s exactly where the conversation needs to shift. General Intelligence Is a Marketing Term “General intelligence” sounds impressive. It implies flexibility, adaptability, and human-like reasoning across domains. But in practice, most AI systems are highly specialized. They perform specific tasks extremely well within defined boundaries. That’s not a weakness. That’s engineering reality. A model trained to generate code is optimized differently from one trained for medical analysis. A recommendation engine is