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My hobby: running deranged surveys — LessWrong

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In late 2024, I was on a long walk with some friends along the coast of the San Francisco Bay when the question arose of just how much of a bubble we live in. It’s well known that the Bay Area is a bubble, and that normal people don’t spend that much time thinking about things like AGI. But there was still some disagreement on just how strong that bubble is. I made a spicy claim: even at NeurIPS, the biggest gathering of AI researchers in the world, half the people wouldn’t know what AGI is. As good Bayesians, we agreed to settle the matter empirically: I would go to NeurIPS, walk around the conference hall, and stop random people to ask them what AGI stands for. Surprisingly, most of the people I approached agreed to answer my question. [1] I ended up asking 38 people, and only 63% of them could tell me what AGI stands for. Some of the people who answered correctly were a little perplexed why I was even asking such a basic question, and if it was a trick question. The people who didn’

x My hobby: running deranged surveys — LessWrong Curated 2026 Top Fifty: 18 % 312 My hobby: running deranged surveys by leogao 27th Mar 2026 11 min read 65 312 In late 2024, I was on a long walk with some friends along the coast of the San Francisco Bay when the question arose of just how much of a bubble we live in. It’s well known that the Bay Area is a bubble, and that normal people don’t spend that much time thinking about things like AGI. But there was still some disagreement on just how strong that bubble is. I made a spicy claim: even at NeurIPS, the biggest gathering of AI researchers

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