François Chollet was an AI skeptic who went from 10+ years to ~2030 on AGI. Now he expects it sooner.

François Chollet is the creator of ARCAGI and has historically been one of the more skeptical voices on near term AGI and LLM scaling. In 2024 when he was asked about his AGI timeline, he recalled that his estimate would have been roughly 10 yearish. In February 2026 he said AGI around 2030~, roughly around the time of ARCAGI 6-7. Today, following the latest Astra release and ARCAGI-3 saturation, he was asked whether he still thinks ~2030 is on track. His answer: “Sooner, given progress is happening faster than I expected.”