Who do you have in mind? In my corner of AI it's pretty uncommon for researchers to even predict "timelines". Predictions have a bad track record in the field and most researchers know it, so don't like to go on record making them. The only prominent AI researcher I know who has made a bunch of predictions with dates is Rodney Brooks [1], and he puts even dog-level general intelligence as "not earlier than 2048". I imagine folks like LeCun or Hinton are more optimistic, but as far as I'm aware they haven't wanted to make specific predictions with dates like that (and LeCun doesn't like the term "AGI", because he doesn't think "general intelligence" exists even for humans).

[1] https://rodneybrooks.com/my-dated-predictions/

AGI has been 20-30 years away for some 70 years now...

Kurzweil in 2002 made $20,000 bet that a difficult, well defined 2h version of Turing test will by passed by 2029.

https://longbets.org/1/

Given development in language models in the last 2 years he may have a decent chance at winning that bet.

People give him 65% chance [0] and by now there are only 7 years left.

[0] https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3648/computer-passes-tur...

Sure...just like there was during the last episode of AI hype a generation ago.

And consensus is never wrong!

Especially assertions of consensus provided without evidence of said consensus.

I don’t know that the consensus is right but the OP’s confidence of it being far off made me think they were unaware of the recent shifts (not just in consensus, but the upstream capabilities.)