A software engineer at Alphabet Inc., François Chollet, has criticized OpenAI for hindering the progress of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) by 5 to 10 years. In a conversation with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, Chollet expressed concerns that OpenAI has significantly altered the landscape of AGI research.

He noted that a few years ago, state-of-the-art results were openly shared, but this is no longer the case due to OpenAI's influence. Chollet accused OpenAI of causing a "complete closing down of frontier research publishing" and diverting resources and attention to Large Language Models (LLMs), which he believes have stifled other potential areas of AGI research.

Chollet reminisced about the earlier days of AI research, stating that despite fewer people being involved, the rate of progress felt higher due to the exploration of more diverse directions. He lamented the current state of the field, where everyone seems to be doing variations of the same thing.

Chollet's criticism comes after he and Mike Knoop, co-founder of Zapier, announced the $1 million ARC-AGI Prize, aimed at increasing the number of researchers focusing on frontier AGI research. Despite 300 teams attempting the ARC-AGI competition last year, the state-of-the-art score has only increased from 20% at inception to 34% today, while humans score between 85-100%. Knoop emphasized that training ChatGPT on more data will not lead to human-level intelligence, a misconception many people hold.