open-ended general intelligence

Can next-token prediction truly evolve into open-ended intelligence?

Most conversations about AI assume AGI is inevitable, only debating what comes after. But that skips the real question: can next-token prediction actually produce general intelligence? One Reddit user is asking for a mechanistic case grounded in computational learning theory and first principles, not trend lines. It's the right question. We don't need philosophical debates about definitions. We need to understand whether today's learning mechanisms can scale to open-ended intelligence.