Artificial General Intelligence, that is an Artificial Intelligence with the ability to redesign itself and other technology on its own, has been called “mankind’s last invention”, since it may not only remove the necessity of any human invention afterwards, but also might design solutions far too complex for human beings to have the ability to contribute to in any case. Because of this, if and when AGI is ever invented, it has been argued by many that it will be the most important innovation in the history of the mankind up to that point. Just as nature’s invention of human intelligence might have transformed the entire planet and generated a greater economic impact than any other innovation in the history of the planet, AGI has been suggested to have the potential for an economic impact larger than that resulting from any other innovation in the history of mankind. This paper explores the case for General Collective Intelligence being a far more important innovation than AGI. General Collective Intelligence has been defined as a solution with the capacity to organize groups of human or artificial intelligences into a single collective intelligence with vastly greater general problem solving ability. A recently proposed model of GCI not only outlines a model for cognition that might also enable AGI, but also identifies hidden patterns in collective outcomes for groups that might make GCI necessary in order to reliably achieve the benefits of AGI while reliably avoiding the potentially catastrophic costs of AGI.