It says that one guy who came up with his own AGI classification system says it might not be required. And despite it being his own system, he still was only able to land on "might not", meaning that he doesn't even understand his own system. He can safely be ignored. Outliers are always implied, of course.

> No! The key thing was that it was general intelligence rather than things like “bird classifier” or “chess bot”.

I suppose if you don't consider the wide range of human intelligence as the marker of general intelligence then a "bird classifier" plus a "chess bot" gives you general intelligence. We had nearly a millennia ago!

But usually general intelligence expects human-like intelligence, which would necessitate autonomy — the most notable feature of human intelligence. Humans would not be able to exist without the intelligence to perform autonomously.

But, regardless, you make a good point: A "language classifier" can be no more AGI than a "bird classifier". These are narrow systems, focused on a single task. A "bird classifier" doesn't become a general intelligence when it crosses some threshold of being able to classify n number of birds just as a "language classifier" wouldn't become a general intelligence when it is able to classify n number of language features, no matter how large n becomes.

Conceivably these classifiers could be used as part of a larger system to achieve general intelligence, but on their own, impossible.