A Black Swan Event? If Machines Begin to Reason Like Us—Will They Ever?

Author's Preface: The excitement around AGI is reaching fever pitch, but beneath the hype lies a reality check—AI, despite its astonishing progress, still operates on statistical inference rather than true understanding. While models like DeepSeek demonstrate impressive reasoning, they remain constrained by limitations in comprehension, real-world interaction, ethical alignment, and resource scalability. The AI industry is at the peak of inflated expectations, much like previous technological bubbles, and still faces fundamental challenges before AGI can truly transform society. Rather than heralding the obsolescence of human intelligence, this era will redefine our roles—shifting from knowledge accumulation to interpretation, ethics, and wisdom. The AI bubble may eventually burst, but what follows will not be the end of human thought; rather, it will mark the beginning of a deeper, more pragmatic integration of machine intelligence into our world.

Today (January 27, 2025), something truly remarkable has happened and I hope you all know about it.

It is about where AGI is headed and it made a huge leap causing a upheaval in the markets and Silicon Valley. For those who may not be aware - Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is a form of AI capable of learning, reasoning, and adapting across diverse tasks at a human level. Unlike narrow AI/ML, which is task-specific, AGI can apply knowledge and problem-solving skills across multiple domains, mimicking human cognition and creativity. It sounds crazy but this is what it is all about.

A product manager I know texted me to share heartbreaking news: "Saurabh with DeepSeek Humanity is done." Initially, I couldn’t fully grasp the weight of that statement. But curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to test it myself.

I prompted DeepSeek to reason with itself and generate questions from the infamous IIT JEE 1993 exam—a test considered one of the hardest in the history of the IITs. What unfolded was beyond belief. It not only analyzed the questions but also generated a question paper, solved it, and explained its reasoning step-by-step. I was astounded by how it used micro-reasoning to decide the most optimal path for each solution. When I complimented it as "mind-blowing," DeepSeek rationalized why I would make such a compliment, looping back into a self-referential thought process—a moment that echoed "strange loops" from G?del, Escher, Bach about the recursive nature of human thinking.

The true marvel of DeepSeek isn’t that it performs better or cheaper than ChatGPT etc, despite what the prevailing narrative or media hype might suggest. As is often the case, the noise overshadows the deeper message. What’s truly groundbreaking is that, for the first time, we as humans can actually read what a machine is thinking. That experience—witnessing a machine rationalize and reason—is nothing short of chilling. Ask anyone who has encountered it; it’s a moment that redefines our relationship with technology.

Instead of fear, I felt pure joy. This wasn’t a dystopian takeover I thought—it was the dawn of an AGI-augmented world. A world where machines don’t just think but reason and collaborate with humanity. But as machines take on the cognitive heavy lifting, a profound question arises and that is when I felt abject fear: If AGI can do all the thinking, what does that mean for us? Will I, as a knowledge worker, still have a role? Will product managers, like me, still be needed? The answer is a hopeful yes, but I am convinced that it will look very different from today.

Not just for me, but for all of us.

A Black Swan event is a rare, unpredictable occurrence with massive, transformative consequences that often defy conventional expectations. I came to understand it during 2000s when Nassim Nicholas Taleb described it as moments that significantly disrupt society, systems, or industries, such as the 2008 financial crisis or the COVID-19 pandemic. What makes Black Swan events particularly striking is that, despite their unpredictability, humans tend to rationalize them in hindsight, acting as though their occurrence was obvious all along. If machines were to truly begin reasoning like humans—demonstrating self-awareness or independent thought—it would undoubtedly qualify as a Black Swan. Such an event would fundamentally reshape the fabric of human society, redefining ethics, labor, power structures, and even the essence of what it means to be human.

The Shift: Age of Knowledge to Age of Reason 2.0

The Age of Reason, as described by Will Durant, was an intellectual movement in the 17th and 18th centuries that emphasized reason, science, and humanism over tradition and religious authority. It marked a shift toward critical thinking, skepticism, and the pursuit of knowledge, driving advancements in philosophy, politics, and science. Thinkers like Descartes, Voltaire, and Locke championed ideas of liberty, equality, and rational governance, laying the foundation for modern democracy and scientific progress. It was a transformative era that challenged old dogmas specially religious ones and reshaped society around reason and progress.

We are on the brink of a new Age of Reason, but this time, knowledge itself will be commoditized. Will this transition lead us into an Age of Wisdom? I’m uncertain, which is why I prefer to call it Age of Reason 2.0.

Imagine a world where we, knowledge workers no longer spend time documenting or synthesizing information—no more creating PowerPoint presentations or drafting lengthy reports. Tasks such as aggregating insights, analyzing trends, and cataloging discoveries, which once defined our professions, is fully automated by AGI systems capable of instant retrieval, real-time updates, and personalized distribution. In this new world, our roles will evolve from managing knowledge to interpreting it, applying it ethically, and ensuring its alignment with organizational values and societal needs.

For centuries, we have prized the act of preserving and organizing our knowledge. From ancient historians to modern technical writers, these efforts have been the cornerstone of learning. But in a future where AGI can instantly aggregate available knowledge—though still prone to bias and errors—our value will no longer lie in merely recording or organizing what we know.

Those days will be gone.

The Rise of Reason, Ethics, Culture, and Storytelling?

As AGI advances, I foresee us emerge as a new class of professionals will emerge—not as mere documenters of knowledge, but as interpreters, ethical stewards, culture managers etc. These roles will be essential in ensuring AGI remain consistent with our values, logic, and emotional intelligence.

Reasoning Engineers/Architects

You will ensure that AGI-driven decisions are logically sound, transparent, and grounded in real-world context. We see that already in companies that are building the new AI systems of today. Your primary role will be to ask: Does this conclusion make sense within the broader system? By evaluating and refining AGI outputs, you will ensure decisions align with intended goals and practical applications. In many ways, this work has already begun, as we question and refine outputs from large language models (LLMs) to ensure accuracy and relevance.

I foresee engineers naturally thriving in this space, leveraging their analytical skills and systems thinking to bridge the gap between AGI logic and real-world outcomes.

Ethics & Oversight Operations Specialists

As AGI integrates deeper into our society, ethical oversight will become critical. These individuals will address key questions around data usage, bias, omission errors, and inclusivity, ensuring that AGI operates responsibly and aligns with societal values. While this isn't the primary focus for many organizations today, it will soon become unavoidable as AI increasingly influences decisions across industries in ways we are only beginning to understand.

I foresee operations managers excelling in this space, leveraging their process-oriented approach and cross-functional oversight to guide ethical implementation and ensure accountability.

Empathy, Culture & People Managers

AGI still cannot fully comprehend the depth of cultural, emotional, and historical nuances. Empathy, Culture, and People Managers will play a vital role in bridging this gap, ensuring that AI-driven decisions are aligned with human experiences and tailored to diverse cultural and social contexts where logic alone falls short. These professionals will be essential in crafting solutions that resonate deeply and meaningfully with people from all walks of life.

I foresee many managers and leaders naturally gravitating toward this space, leveraging their interpersonal skills, emotional intelligence, and cultural awareness to guide AGI systems in ways that prioritize humanity and inclusivity.

Storytelling Strategists

As AGI generates vast amounts of information; the ability to craft compelling and meaningful narratives will become more crucial than ever. Narrative Strategists will take raw data and transform it into stories that inspire action, build trust, and foster understanding. While machines can process facts with incredible precision, they cannot replicate the depth of human emotion—our expressions, tone, and spontaneity—elements that give storytelling its unique power and resonance.

In this new era, success will not hinge on how much you know but on how effectively you interpret, guide, and humanize the intelligence AGI creates. I anticipate that many product managers will naturally find themselves excelling in this space, where their ability to communicate vision and connect with people will be invaluable.

A New Renaissance: Returning to Our Roots?

As AGI takes over many intellectual and knowledge-based roles, an intriguing shift could emerge where humans move toward professions rooted in creativity, connection, and organic processes. Fields like farming, sustainable agriculture, music, art, and traditional crafts will see a renaissance as people seek to escape the mechanized precision of AGI and embrace the authenticity of human effort. We may find purpose in cultivating the earth through farming, creating music that reflects emotional depth, or crafting handmade goods that carry a personal story. In fact, these pursuits will become even more valued as we seek the human touch to break away from the monotony of machine-generated knowledge and reasoning.

Hypothesis: A Society Centered on Meaning and Purpose?

With every technological revolution, we automate more tasks, moving up the hierarchy of work. Today, we are so consumed with knowledge creation and management that we rarely have time to focus on what it means to be human. My hypothesis is that as AGI takes over knowledge documentation, we will finally have the space to engage more deeply with topics of humanity than ever before.

This shift will redefine work itself!

• From Information Management to Wisdom Creation – Instead of merely collecting and organizing data, people will focus on interpreting and applying knowledge with intent and purpose.
• From Execution to Purpose – Jobs will no longer be about task completion but about answering fundamental questions: Why are we doing this? How does it benefit humanity?

This transformation will reshape education as well. Instead of training students to memorize facts or replicate processes, the focus will shift to critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and leadership with empathy—skills that will enable them to collaborate effectively with AGI.

As AGI advances, the value of human work will no longer be measured by efficiency in knowledge tasks but by our ability to bring meaning, wisdom, and purpose.

There is also an alternative, darker hypothesis: a future where the power of AGI centralizes in the hands of a select few, creating unprecedented inequalities and driving the world toward catastrophic conflict (see below). In such a scenario, corporations, governments, or individuals controlling advanced AGI systems could exploit their capabilities to dominate markets, suppress dissent, and even weaponize technology for geopolitical advantage.

Challenges Remain in the AGI-Augmented World

The journey into an AGI-augmented future is filled with opportunities, but it also comes with its fair share of challenges. I foresee the following:

Bias

AGI systems, while incredibly powerful, are not immune to the biases of their creators or the flawed data they are trained on. Without careful oversight, these biases can perpetuate systemic inequalities or lead to unintended consequences. For example, when I asked DeepSeek certain questions, it refused to respond because they were deemed "out of scope," showcasing how AGI’s behavior is shaped by its programming and boundaries. Ensuring transparency and fairness in AGI decision-making will require continuous human intervention to identify and correct these biases.

Values

In our flat world, one of the most complex challenges will be determining whose ethics guide AGI decisions. Imagine a scenario where each country develops its own AGI to reflect its unique cultural, political, and ideological values. This fragmentation could result in conflicting priorities and ethical standards, creating divides rather than fostering unity. Global collaboration across cultures and disciplines will be essential to establishing shared frameworks that enable AGI to serve humanity equitably while respecting regional differences. We are already seeing early signs of this divide with systems like ChatGPT, developed in the US, and DeepSeek, developed in China. Both are technological marvels, yet there is a growing divide and mutual suspicion in how each side perceives the other's large language model (LLM) and its underlying values.

Human Thinking

As AGI increasingly takes over intellectual tasks, there is a real risk that humans may lose the ability to think critically and reason independently. Over-reliance on AGI could lead us to blindly accept its outputs without questioning their validity or considering alternative approaches. To avoid this, we must remain engaged with AGI outputs, fostering a strong foundation in critical thinking and cultivating the ability to challenge, interpret, and refine AGI-generated insights.

As much as I marveled at the way DeepSeek reasoned, it never quite captured the elegance in human thought. When it solved IIT JEE problems, the solutions felt mechanical—precise but devoid of the subtle beauty and intuition that humans bring to problem-solving. There is an artistry in how humans approach challenges, where we rely on intuition, creativity, and even serendipity. Machines, no matter how advanced, lack this organic quality.

Non-Knowledge Workers are the Overlooked Majority

What happens to those who are not part of the knowledge economy, who do not work in Silicon Valley or similar hubs of innovation? This is a pressing question with no easy answers. Take a look around—unemployment is widespread, inflation has reached historic highs, asset bubbles dominate the stock market, we’ve survived a pandemic, and the gap between the rich and the poor has widened to unprecedented levels. Throughout history, technological breakthroughs have often been accompanied by societal upheavals. Consider the fall of monarchies in previous centuries—when the masses felt they were being treated unfairly or lacked access to basic needs, it led to movements, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.

Today, echoes of history are beginning to resurface. It feels as though societal systems must undergo significant adaptation to keep pace with disruptive changes in technology. Advances in AGI will inevitably ripple into societal and economic structures, impacting even those far removed from its development. We need to address this gap proactively. The tax codes and income distribution mechanisms of today are ill-equipped to handle the realities of a world shaped by AGI. Lawmakers and policymakers will need to rethink economic frameworks to ensure that those left behind by the knowledge economy are not left without support. This is no longer just a technological issue—it’s a societal imperative.

The Hard Problems AI Still Has to Solve

Despite its remarkable advances, AGI today still faces unsolved challenges that will define whether it can truly reshape the world as dramatically as I envision above:

1. True Understanding vs. Statistical Approximation Large Language Models (LLMs) like DeepSeek, GPT, and Gemini operate on pattern recognition, not actual comprehension. They predict words and actions based on statistical likelihoods, rather than building conceptual models of reality like humans do. This is why they can generate impressive outputs yet fail in unpredictable ways—hallucinating information, making incorrect assumptions, or misinterpreting the nuances of a problem. Without a fundamental shift in how AI understands information, the leap to AGI remains incomplete.
2. The Bottleneck of Data and Compute AI’s growth today is fueled by an unprecedented availability of data and computational power, but these resources are finite. Training the next wave of models requires exponentially increasing compute resources, and we are already seeing limits in energy consumption and supply chain constraints for AI hardware. The industry is racing toward efficiency breakthroughs, but whether we can sustain this pace remains uncertain.
3. Reasoning in the Physical World True intelligence is not just about excelling at exams or writing convincing essays—it’s about interacting with and adapting to the physical world. Robotics and AI-driven autonomy remain stubbornly difficult problems, requiring advancements in embodied cognition, real-time decision-making, and sensor integration. The moment AGI truly arrives is when machines can not only reason about the world but also act in it with the same adaptability as humans.
4. The Fragility of AI Alignment and Ethics Ensuring AGI aligns with human values is an unsolved and possibly unsolvable challenge. Current AI systems are deeply influenced by the biases in their training data, the objectives set by their creators, and the rules imposed by institutions. As AGI becomes more autonomous, ensuring that it operates within ethical boundaries becomes exponentially more difficult. Who decides what an AI should or should not do? And how do we prevent unintended consequences when machines begin making independent decisions?
5. The Economic and Societal Transition Even if AGI reaches full capability, society’s readiness to absorb such a transformation is another question entirely. Entire industries will need to be restructured, educational systems will have to shift focus, and governance models will require an overhaul. Historically, major technological leaps have led to displacement before creating new opportunities. The AI era will be no different, and the transition could be far messier than many anticipate.

So, What's Coming Next?

Are the robots coming in this century? Yes, I think so. They will no longer confined to factories or labs or your neighborhood—they willl step into the physical world to reshape industries and everyday life. Powered by AGI, these machines will move beyond pre-programmed actions, learning and adapting in real time to perform complex tasks. From autonomous delivery drones and self-driving cars to robotic caregivers and maintenance bots, these machines will interact with the world with unprecedented flexibility and intelligence.

If robots begin to mimic human biomechanics and edge toward sentience, the possibility of machines surpassing and potentially taking control of human systems becomes a topic of legitimate concern. While such a scenario might still seem distant, it raises critical questions about governance, safety, and control in an increasingly AI-driven world. To prevent such an eventuality, robust regulations and ethical frameworks will be essential—yet these conversations are notably lacking in depth and urgency.

Currently, the excitement surrounding technological breakthroughs often overshadows discussions about the long-term implications of advanced robotics and AGI. Without proactive measures, we risk entering an era where machines operate with autonomy that exceeds our ability to control them, leading to scenarios that some visionaries and thought leaders have warned about—potentially threatening the foundations of human civilization.