Seattle, WA
Are we really building AGI?
Seattle builds more AI than almost any city on Earth. The engineers here aren't trying to build AGI — they're shipping products, hitting business targets, making models faster and cheaper. But the industry wrapped around their work insists that every step is bringing us closer to general intelligence. Scaling laws. Emergent capabilities.
June 26, 2026
Town Hall Seattle — 1119 8th Ave, Seattle, WA 98101
3 PM - 7 PM
An evening of provocation, falsification, and the questions the AI field has never asked. Every contribution becomes part of the peer-reviewed Seattle 2026 City AGI Report.
This isn't just an event. Every contribution at this event will be assessed against empirical and theoretical scientific standards, documented in a peer-reviewed publication, and synthesized into the 2026 Annual AGI Report.
Seattle 2026 City AGI Report
Every contribution at this event will be assessed against empirical and theoretical scientific standards, documented in a peer-reviewed publication, and become part of GEA's permanent scientific record of where AGI research stands.
Read more →2026 Annual AGI Report
A cumulative annual synthesis of every City AGI Report — GEA's science-grounded counterpart to industry AI reports. Where AGI research actually stands, measured by science rather than benchmarks or capital flows.
Read more →
An illusory concept of a world, ambitiously marketed by Silicon Valley elites that debases human purpose while miraculously creating an Eden for humanity.
Her substack is HessieJones and, more recently, System Malfunction. In the last decade, Hessie has worked in the responsible tech space. She is the Cofounder of Personally Identifiable Information Standards Architecture (PIISA), developing an open model to detect and remediate PII in AI models; She is a former board member of Women in AI Ethics™ (WAIE) to elevate the voices of the experts working towards responsible development and design of AI models and systems. In her work, she aims to advance the quality of human-computer experiences through values-based innovation, prioritizing human-centred design.
His decade in AGI has included extensive work with industry partners on what most AGI researchers have never seriously considered: how a general intelligence would actually be deployed. Specifically, Adam has spent years exploring AGI in the context of ambient intelligence — environments where intelligence is woven into the fabric of daily life rather than confined to a chatbot window. This is the productization layer of AGI, and it remains almost entirely absent from mainstream AGI discourse, which is dominated by people who have never had to think past the demo.
Originally from South Africa, Adam brings a perspective shaped by both mature and emerging markets, with a clear understanding of how advanced technologies create opportunity in regions often overlooked. His background spans advanced engineering environments, large-scale IT modernization, and AI-driven strategy, and he is known for translating complex technical concepts into strategic direction that bridges technical and business audiences.
At the Global Economic Alliance, Adam leads strategic partnerships and serves as the public face of the organization's events, where his combination of long-tenure AGI exposure, productization experience, and cross-domain fluency makes him a natural host for the kinds of conversations the AI field has been avoiding.