When the Context Flips: Rethinking AGI and the Future of Human-AI Collaboration

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) means different things to different people. Some define it as a system capable of performing any intellectual task a human can. Others see it as surpassing top experts, writing research papers, solving hard science problems, or creating profound art. But maybe the most important change won't be in what AGI does, but in how we relate to it.

Right now, AI is reactive. Whether it's a chatbot, coding copilot, or productivity assistant, the model waits for your input. You initiate the interaction. You provide the context.

This relationship is about to flip.

Instead of us giving AI context, AI will begin giving context to us.

From On-Demand to Always-On

Imagine an AI system that doesn't sit idle, waiting for you to prompt it. Instead, it actively gathers, curates, and surfaces information for you throughout the day. It might draft your messages, highlight what matters in your inbox, remind you of key priorities, summarize relevant articles, or pull together materials for an upcoming meeting. All of it shaped by your preferences, your history, your goals.

This kind of system won't necessarily be running all the time. It could work in short bursts, efficiently triggered when needed. But it will hold a persistent thread of context, a continuity most AI systems today don't have. Despite growing token windows and retrieval capabilities, today's models still lack the kind of long-term, situational awareness that would allow for true proactivity.

That is what will change.

When AI becomes a context provider instead of just a context receiver, it stops being a tool and becomes more like an assistant. Or even a partner.

The Context Window Gap

Humans have an enormous, flexible context window. We remember conversations, goals, emotions, intentions, priorities, and nuanced subtext - often simultaneously. Our models don't come close, even with huge context windows. But future systems will find ways to mimic this. Not by brute force token size, but through smart memory systems, hierarchical planning, and interaction-aware reasoning.

When that happens, we won't just be prompting AI anymore. It will be prompting us.

A More Human Future

This isn't just about convenience. It's about how we spend our time and attention.

If we get this right, it could free us from the constant low-level burden of managing to-do lists, scanning feeds, or performing routine tasks. We could offload the drudgery and spend more time on what makes us human - creating, exploring, connecting, moving, being.

Done wrong, of course, this could become dystopian. Surveillance, manipulation, loss of agency - all real risks. But done with care, transparency, and alignment with human values, it could enable a new kind of flourishing.

We could become less overwhelmed. Less isolated. More present.

How Do We Get There?

Getting to this future won't just require better models. It will require better architecture - persistent memory, smart retrieval, nuanced reasoning, modular agents, and alignment with human rhythms. More than anything, it will require intention.

We need to decide what kind of intelligence we want to live with.

Because AGI might not be defined by intelligence alone. It might be defined by context - and by who controls it.