Why Today’s AI Isn’t Intelligent—and What Comes After

Peter Voss, founder of IGO.AI and co-originator of the term Artificial General Intelligence, joins the show to explain why today’s AI breakthroughs still fall short of real intelligence—and what technical leaders should understand before betting their organizations on them. Peter shares his unconventional path from leaving high school at 16 to building and exiting a 400-person software company, then spending five years studying philosophy, cognitive psychology, and intelligence itself. That work led him to a clear conclusion: most AI systems today are powerful but fundamentally limited. They don’t reason, they don’t understand context, and they can’t adapt in real time. In this conversation, Peter breaks down: Why Deep Blue and AlphaZero represent different waves of AI—but still aren’t “thinking machines” How large language models are pre-trained, read-only systems that can’t truly learn during use Why hallucinations and 95% accuracy fail in multi-step, real-world environments What went wrong with McDonald’s drive-thru AI (including bacon on ice cream) How IGO.AI replaced 3,000 seasonal call-center agents at 1-800-Flowers using cognitive AI This episode challenges common assumptions about AI progress and reframes the conversation around architecture, reasoning, and leadership responsibility—not hype.