Unpacking AGI hype vs. reality – what will it take for AI to reach AGI?

**The September edition of the *AI on the Amstel meetup* will be focused on AGI.** To simplify, AGI (artificial general intelligence) refers to the concept of AI matching or surpassing human capabilities across virtually all cognitive tasks. Reaching AGI is the stated goal of organizations like OpenAI.

The meetup community keeps asking for an AGI meetup, so we're finally doing the AGI meetup! The September meetup will be at the University of Amsterdam's biggest theater in the Roeterseiland Campus in central Amsterdam. Pictures of the theater can be found below. The September meetup will include the usual *AI on the Amstel* meetup community, along with university students focused on AI/computer science.

We’ve put together a great panel for this event. Each panelist brings a different perspective. **Frank van Harmelen** is a Knowledge Representation & Reasoning professor in the computer science department at Vrije Universiteit (VU). He is one of the top AI academics in the Netherlands, and he even has [his own Wikipedia page!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_van_Harmelen) **Anna Koivuniemi** is the Head of the Google DeepMind Impact Accelerator. Google DeepMind is one of the leading research labs working at the cutting edge of AGI. The Google DeepMind Impact Accelerator is an organization set up to accelerate the social impact of Google DeepMind's technologies and expertise to benefit humanity. Finally, **Rick Lamers** is an AI engineer and researcher at Groq. Groq builds cutting-edge chips to compete with Nvidia, and has raised almost $2 billion in funding. Rick brings a unique perspective, as he is familiar with the hardware needs behind AI and is actively researching the AI industry. Rick [publishes a Substack](https://substack.com/@ricklamers) that covers the latest developments in AI.

For those that are new to this meetup, the ***[AI on the Amstel meetup](https://www.aiontheamstel.nl/)*** is a monthly technical meetup that features knowledgeable speakers discussing "in the weeds" AI topics and challenges. This meetup caters to engineers, product managers, and founders in AI. The September meetup will be a special meetup in partnership with ***[Amsterdam AI](https://www.amsterdamai.com/nl/about)***, a coalition representing universities (like UvA and VU), research centers and medical centers (like the Netherlands Cancer Institute), and the City of Amsterdam.

**There will be time for networking before and after the panel discussion.** Doors open at 17:00. Finally, since we get asked about this a lot, it's fine if you arrive late! We know work can be busy!