As we reach AGI, intelligence matters less and context matters more — even the smartest person in the world would be less useful than a random coworker if they lack organizational context.
Flo argues that context is now more valuable than raw intelligence in AI systems. He illustrates this with a John von Neumann analogy: the smartest man in history, magically appearing at your office, would be less useful than your random coworker because he lacks the context to do anything immediately useful. ✦ AI generated
Flo Crivello · The Cognitive Revolution · 2026-08-10 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 6:24
“How does Lindy Teammate onboard? How is information stored and what are the tricky considerations in the multiplayer context?”
I really do think that as we we're getting to AGI and as we now arguably have AGI, intelligence actually matters less and less comparatively speaking and context matters more and more. You know, I often think of it as like look, you know, like one of the smartest men in history was John Von Neumann, right? If you were to have John Von Neumann just magically appear next to you at the office, this guy over the next hour or day would be less useful to you than your random coworker, right? So, and that's because of context because you're like, you got a job to do and like you don't have time to onboard John, you know, he doesn't have the context to it.
verbatim transcript · starts at 6:24
6:24been obsessing about which is I really do think that as we we're getting to AGI and as we now arguably have AGI, intelligence actually matters less and less comparatively speaking and context matters more and more. You know, I often think of it as like look, you know, like one of the smartest men in history was John Vonman, right? If you were to have John Vonoman just magically appear next
6:48to you at the office, this guy over the next hour or day would be less useful to you than your random coworker, right? So, and that's because of context because you're like, you got a job to do and like you don't have time to onboard John, you know, he doesn't have the context to it. So, you're like, "Hey, like I love you. I really want to talk
7:07to you, but right now I'm going to talk to this guy because I have like an important thing to do." So, we I do agree that context is is super important. And I think it's one of those surprising times when actually agents are better than humans at on boarding. It shouldn't take me by surprise anymore, but it always does because you always operate under the assumption that
7:26oh, you know, we don't have AGI yet, so obviously humans are going to be better, but they're not. And and the reason for that is because very often one major ways that companies on board their human employees is a wikis, right? There's like in person on boarding sessions and all of that stuff, but there's alo a lot of written documentation. And as everyone knows, the moment written
7:47documentation is written, it's out of date. And so what we've built is we built this shared context layer and what we call like a hydration system. And so basically the way it works is you you sign up to linkate you connect your tools. So you know by all means connect your wiki like that that'll help you know like confluence notion Google docs whatever and then you connect the most
- ·As we reach AGI, intelligence matters less comparatively
- ·Context matters more and more for AI systems
- ·Raw intelligence without context yields near-zero utility
- ·John von Neumann: one of the smartest men in history
- ·Magically appears at your office with no context
- ·Would be less useful than your random coworker
- ·No time to onboard; lacks immediate applicability