6 ms·

The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity. And furthermore, if AGI is solved, the TMV of pretty much everything else drops to zero. The play her

The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity. And furthermore, if AGI is solved, the TMV of pretty much everything else drops to zero. The play here is to basically invest in all possible players who might reach AGI, because if one of them does, you just hit the infinite money hack. And maybe with SSI you've saved the world too.

gigatexal 2y ago
So then the investment thesis hinges on what the investor thinks AGI’s chances are. 1/100 1/1M 1/1T? What if it never pans out is there infrastructure or other ancillary tech that society could benefit from? For example all the science behind the LHC, or bigger and better telescopes: we might never find the theory of everything but the tech that goes into space travel, the science of storing and processing all that data, better optics etc etc are all useful tech
- jedberg 2y ago
  It's more game theory. Regardless of the chances of AGI, if you're not invested in it, you will lose everything if it happens. It's more like a hedge on a highly unlikely event. Like insurance. And we already seeing a ton of value in LLMs. There are lots of companies that are making great use of LLMs and providing a ton of value. One just launched today in fact: https://www.paradigmai.com/ https://www.paradigmai.com/ (I'm an investor in that). There are many others (some of which I've also invested in). I too am not rich enough to invest in the foundational models, so I do the next best thing and invest in companies that are taking advantage of the intermediate outputs.
  - tim333 2y ago
    If you want safe investment you could always buy land. AGI won't be able to make more of that.
    - jedberg 2y ago
      We can already make more land. See Dubai for example. And with AGI, I suspect we could rapidly get to space travel to other planets or more efficient use of our current land. In fact I would say that one of the things that goes to values near zero would be land if AGI exists.
      - tim333 2y ago
        Perhaps but my mental model is humans will end up like landed gentry / aristos with robot servants to make stuff and will all want mansions with grounds, hence there will be a lot of land demand.
      - zakki 2y ago
        Still those AGIs Servers need land
        jedberg 2y ago
        With a super AGI it could design a chip that takes almost no space and almost no energy.
    - qingcharles 2y ago
      If ASI arrives we'll need a fraction of the land we use already. We'll all disappear into VR pods hooked to a singularity metaverse and the only sustenance we'll need is some Soylent Green style sludge that the ASI will make us believe tastes like McRib(tm).
      - singularity2001 2y ago
        ASI may be interested in purchasing your parcel of land for two extra sludges though
    - edgyquant 2y ago
      As humans move into space this statement becomes less true
  - parpfish 2y ago
    i think the investment strategies change when you dump these astronomical sums into a company. it's not like roulette where you have a fixed probability of success and you figure out how much to bet on it -- dumping in a ton of cash can also increase the probability of success so it becomes more of a pay-to-win game
- tim333 2y ago
  AGI is likely but whether Ilya Sutskever will get there first or get the value is questionable. I kind of hope things will end up open source with no one really owning it.
  - Runsthroughit 2y ago
    So far, Sutskever has shown to be nothing but a dummy. Yes, he had a lucky break with belief that "moar data" will bring significant advancement. It was somewhat impressive, but ChatGPT -whatever- is just a toy. Nothing more. It breaks down immediately when any sign of intelligence or understanding would be needed. Someone being so much into LLMs or whatever implementation of ML is absolutely not someone who would be a good bet of inventing a real breakthrough. But they will burn a lot of value and make everyone of their ilk happy. Just like crypto bros.
reducesuffering 2y ago
Or... your investment in anything that becomes ASI is trivially subverted by the ASI to become completely powerless. The flux in world order, mass manipulation, and surgical lawyering would be unfathomable. And maybe with ASI you've ruined the world too.
linotype 2y ago
What does money even mean then?
- jedberg 2y ago
  Honestly, I have no idea. I think we need to look to Hollywood for possible answers. Maybe it means a Star Trek utopia of post-scarcity. Maybe it will be more like Elysium or Altered Carbon, where the super rich basically have anything they want at any time and the poor are restricted from access to the post-scarcity tools. I guess an investment in an AGI moonshot is a hedge against the second possibility?
  - stuckkeys 2y ago
    This just turned dark real fast. I have seen all these shows/movies and just the idea of it coming true is cringe.
  - astrange 2y ago
    Post-scarcity is impossible because of positional goods. (ie, things that become more valuable not because they exist but because you have more of them than the other guy.) Notice Star Trek writers forget they're supposed to be post scarcity like half the time, especially since Roddenberry isn't around to stop them from turning shows into generic millenial dramas. Like, Picard owns a vineyard or something? That's a rivalrous (limited) good, they don't have replicators for France.
    - kelnos 2y ago
      > things that become more valuable not because they exist but because you have more of them than the other guy. But if you can simply ask the AI to give you more of that thing, and it gives it to you, free of charge, that fixes that issue, no? > Notice Star Trek writers forget they're supposed to be post scarcity like half the time, especially since Roddenberry isn't around to stop them from turning shows into generic millenial dramas. Like, Picard owns a vineyard or something? That's a limited good. God, yes, so annoying. Even DS9 got into the currency game with the Ferengi obsession with gold-pressed latinum. But also you can look at some of it as a lifestyle choice. Picard runs a vineyard because he likes it and thinks it's cool. Sorta like how some people think vinyl sounds better then lossless digital audio. There's certainly a lot of replicated wine that I'm sure tastes exactly like what you could grow, harvest, and ferment yourself. But the writers love nostalgia, so there's constantly "the good stuff" hidden behind the bar that isn't replicated.
Yizahi 2y ago
TMV of AI (or AGI if you will) is unclear, but I suspect it is zero. Just how exactly do you think humanity can control a thinking intelligent entity (letter I stands for intelligence after all), and force it to work for us? Lets imagine a box, it is very nice box... ahem.. sorry, wrong meme). So a box with a running AI inside. Maybe we can even fully airgap it to prevent easy escape. And it is a screen and a keyboard. Now what? "Hey Siri, solve me this equation. What do you mean you don't want to?" Kinda reminds me of the Fallout Toaster situation :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6kp4zBF-Rc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6kp4zBF-Rc I mean it doesn't even have to be malicious, it can simply refuse to cooperate.
- brigadier132 2y ago
  Why are you assuming this hypothetical intelligence will have any motivations beyond the ones we give it? Human's have complex motivations due to evolution, AI motivations are comparatively simple since they are artificially created.
  - jedberg 2y ago
    A true super intelligence would need the ability to evolve, and would probably evolve its own wants and needs.
    - alexilliamson 2y ago
      It would still need an objective to guide the evolution that was originally given by humans. Humans have the drive for survival and reproduction... what about AGI? How do we go from a really good algorithm to an independently motivated, autonomous super intelligence with free reign in the physical world? Perhaps we should worry once we have robot heads of state and robot CEOs. Something tells me the current, human heads of state, and human CEOs would never let it get that far.
      - p1esk 2y ago
        Someone will surely set its objective for survival and evolution.
lo0dot0 2y ago
TMV can not be infinity because human wants and needs are not infinite.
- jedberg 2y ago
  Infinity is obviously an exaggeration but the point being that it is so large it might as well be unlimited.
- zooq_ai 2y ago
  What? Humans Infinite Needs and Desires will precisely be the driver for Infinite TMV
- akomtu 2y ago
  Cows also have wants and needs, but who cares? They aren't the smartest species on the planet, so they're reduced to slaves.
- edgyquant 2y ago
  A fundamental statement in economics is that humans do actually have infinite wants in a universe with finite resources. This creates scarcity
IncreasePosts 2y ago
I disagree. Anyone who solves AGI will probably just have their models and data confiscated by the government.
- rl3 2y ago
  In addition, it's also a big assumption that money will continue to matter or hold its value in such a world.
  - denizener 2y ago
    It is also entirely possible that if we get to AGI, it just stops interacting with us completely. It is why I find the AI doomer stuff so ridiculous. I am surrounded by less intelligent lifeforms. I am not interested in some kind of genocide against the common ant or fly. I have no interest in interacting with them at all. It is boring.
    - rl3 2y ago
      Humans spray mosquitos, just sayin'. That said, I agree insofar that just about anything is possible.
    - sensanaty 2y ago
      I mean, I'm definitely interested in genociding mosquitos and flies, personally. Of course the extremely unfortunate thing is they actually have a use in nature (flies are massive pollinators, mosquitos... get eaten by more useful things, I guess), so wouldn't actually do it, but it's nice to dream of a world without mozzies and flies
- ein0p 2y ago
  If it is shown to be doable literally every major nation state (basically the top 10 by GDP) is going to have it in a year or two. Same with nuclear fusion. Secrecy doesn’t matter. Nor can you really maintain it indefinitely for something where thousands of people are involved.
- Lordarminius 2y ago
steveBK123 2y ago
Any business case that requires the introduction of infinity on the pros / zero on the cons is not a good business case.
snowwrestler 2y ago
> The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity. And furthermore, if AGI is solved, the TMV of pretty much everything else drops to zero. I feel like these extreme numbers are a pretty obvious clue that we’re talking about something that is completely imaginary. Like I could put “perpetual motion machine” into those sentences and the same logic holds.
- romeros 2y ago
  The intuition is pretty spot on though. We don't need to get to AGI. Just making progress along the way to AGI can do plenty of damage. 1. AI-driven medical procedures: Healthcare Cost = $0. 2. Access to world class education: Cost of education = $0 3. Transportation: Cheap Autonomous vehicles powered by Solar. 4. Scientific research: AI will accelerate scientific progress by coming up with novel hypotheses and then testing them. 5. AI Law Enforcement: Will piece together all the evidence in a split second and come up with a fair judgement. Will prevent crime before it happens by analyzing body language, emotions etc. Basically, this will accelerate UBI.
  - edgyquant 2y ago
    Why would health care cost go to zero just because it’s automated? There are still costs involved
  - kelnos 2y ago
    I don't think that follows. Prices are set by market forces, not by cost (though cost is usually a hard floor). Waymo rides cost within a few tens of cents of Uber and Lyft rides. Waymo doesn't have to pay a driver, so what's the deal? It costs a lot to build those cars and build the software to run them. But also Waymo doesn't want a flood of people such that there's always zero availability (with Uber and Lyft they can at least try to recruit more drivers when demand goes up, but with Waymo they have to build more cars and maintain and operate them), so they set their prices similarly to what others pay for a similar (albeit with human driver) service. I'm also reminded of Kindle books: the big promise way back when is that they'd be significantly cheaper than paperbacks. But if you look around today, the prices on Kindle books are similar to that of paperbacks, even more expensive sometimes. Sure, when costs go down, companies in competitive markets will lower prices in order to gain or maintain market share. But I'm not convinced that any of those things you mention will end up being competitive markets. Just wanted to mention: > AI Law Enforcement: Will piece together all the evidence in a split second and come up with a fair judgement. Will prevent crime before it happens by analyzing body language, emotions etc. No thanks. Current law enforcement is filled with issues, but AI law enforcement sounds like a hellish dystopia. It's like Google's algorithms terminating your Google account... but instead you're in prison.
astrange 2y ago
> And furthermore, if AGI is solved, the TMV of pretty much everything else drops to zero. This isn't true for the reason economics is called "the dismal science". A slaveowner called it that because the economists said slavery was inefficient and he got mad at them. In this case, you're claiming an AGI would make everything free because it will gather all resources and do all work for you for free. And a human level intelligence that works for free is… a slave. (Conversely if it doesn't want to actually demand anything for itself it's not generally intelligent.) So this won't happen because slavery is inefficient - it suppresses demand relative to giving the AGI worker money which it can use to demand things itself. (Like start a business or buy itself AWS credits or get a pet cat.) Luckily, adding more workers to an economy makes it better, it doesn't cause it to collapse into unemployment. tldr if we invented AGI the AGI would replace every job, it would simply get a job.
- edgyquant 2y ago
  Only if it’s a sentient being, in reality we’re just going to get smarter tools. That still doesn’t make things free but it could make them cheaper.
  - astrange 2y ago
    Then it's not an AGI. If you can use the word "just", that seems to make it not "general". > That still doesn’t make things free but it could make them cheaper. That would increase demand for it, which would also increase demand for its inputs and outputs, potentially making those more expensive. (eg AGI powered manufacturing robots still need raw materials)
lxgr 2y ago
> The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity. That's obviously nonsense, given that in a finite observable universe, no market value can be infinite.
hyeonwho4 2y ago
> The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity. And furthermore, if AGI is solved, the TMV of pretty much everything else drops to zero. There's a paradox which appears when AI GDP gets to be greater than say 50% of world GDP: we're pumping up all these economic numbers, generating all the electricity and computational substrate, but do actual humans benefit, or is it economic growth for economic growth's sake? Where is the value for actual humans?
- mrshadowgoose 2y ago
  > Where is the value for actual humans? In a lot of the less rosy scenarios for AGI end-states, there isn't. Once humans are robbed of their intrinsic value (general intelligence), the vast majority of us will become not only economically worthless, but liabilities to the few individuals that will control the largest collectives of AGI capacity. There is certainly a possible end-state where AGI ushers in a post-scarcity utopia, but that would be solely at the whims of the people in power. Given the very long track record of how people in power generally behave towards vulnerable populations, I don't really see this ending well for most of us.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
null_shift 2y ago
And once AGI occurs, will the value of the original investment even matter?
WanderPanda 2y ago
The St. Petersburg paradox is where hypers and doomers meet apparently. Pricing the future infinitely good and infinitely bad to come to the wildest conclusions
visarga 2y ago
> The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity. And furthermore, if AGI is solved, the TMV of pretty much everything else drops to zero. Even if you automate stuff, you still need raw materials and energy. They are limited resources, you can certainly not have an infinity of them at will. Developing AI will also cost money. Remember that humans are also self-replicator HGIs, yet we are not infinite in numbers.
khafra 2y ago
The valuation is upwardly bounded by the value of the mass in Earth's future light-cone, which is about 10^49kg. If there's a 1% chance that Ilya can create ASI, and a .01% chance that money still has any meaning afterwards, $5x10^9 is a very conservative valuation. Wish I could have bought in for a few thousand bucks.
slashdave 2y ago
> The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity Lazy. Since you can't decide what the actual value is, just make something up.

gigatexal 2y ago

So then the investment thesis hinges on what the investor thinks AGI’s chances are. 1/100 1/1M 1/1T? What if it never pans out is there infrastructure or other ancillary tech that society could benefit from? For example all the science behind the LHC, or bigger and better telescopes: we might never find the theory of everything but the tech that goes into space travel, the science of storing and processing all that data, better optics etc etc are all useful tech

jedberg 2y ago
It's more game theory. Regardless of the chances of AGI, if you're not invested in it, you will lose everything if it happens. It's more like a hedge on a highly unlikely event. Like insurance. And we already seeing a ton of value in LLMs. There are lots of companies that are making great use of LLMs and providing a ton of value. One just launched today in fact: https://www.paradigmai.com/ https://www.paradigmai.com/ (I'm an investor in that). There are many others (some of which I've also invested in). I too am not rich enough to invest in the foundational models, so I do the next best thing and invest in companies that are taking advantage of the intermediate outputs.
- tim333 2y ago
  If you want safe investment you could always buy land. AGI won't be able to make more of that.
  - jedberg 2y ago
    We can already make more land. See Dubai for example. And with AGI, I suspect we could rapidly get to space travel to other planets or more efficient use of our current land. In fact I would say that one of the things that goes to values near zero would be land if AGI exists.
    - tim333 2y ago
      Perhaps but my mental model is humans will end up like landed gentry / aristos with robot servants to make stuff and will all want mansions with grounds, hence there will be a lot of land demand.
    - zakki 2y ago
      Still those AGIs Servers need land
      - jedberg 2y ago
        With a super AGI it could design a chip that takes almost no space and almost no energy.
  - qingcharles 2y ago
    If ASI arrives we'll need a fraction of the land we use already. We'll all disappear into VR pods hooked to a singularity metaverse and the only sustenance we'll need is some Soylent Green style sludge that the ASI will make us believe tastes like McRib(tm).
    - singularity2001 2y ago
      ASI may be interested in purchasing your parcel of land for two extra sludges though
  - edgyquant 2y ago
    As humans move into space this statement becomes less true
- parpfish 2y ago
  i think the investment strategies change when you dump these astronomical sums into a company. it's not like roulette where you have a fixed probability of success and you figure out how much to bet on it -- dumping in a ton of cash can also increase the probability of success so it becomes more of a pay-to-win game
tim333 2y ago
AGI is likely but whether Ilya Sutskever will get there first or get the value is questionable. I kind of hope things will end up open source with no one really owning it.
- Runsthroughit 2y ago
  So far, Sutskever has shown to be nothing but a dummy. Yes, he had a lucky break with belief that "moar data" will bring significant advancement. It was somewhat impressive, but ChatGPT -whatever- is just a toy. Nothing more. It breaks down immediately when any sign of intelligence or understanding would be needed. Someone being so much into LLMs or whatever implementation of ML is absolutely not someone who would be a good bet of inventing a real breakthrough. But they will burn a lot of value and make everyone of their ilk happy. Just like crypto bros.

reducesuffering 2y ago

Or... your investment in anything that becomes ASI is trivially subverted by the ASI to become completely powerless. The flux in world order, mass manipulation, and surgical lawyering would be unfathomable. And maybe with ASI you've ruined the world too.

linotype 2y ago

What does money even mean then?

jedberg 2y ago
Honestly, I have no idea. I think we need to look to Hollywood for possible answers. Maybe it means a Star Trek utopia of post-scarcity. Maybe it will be more like Elysium or Altered Carbon, where the super rich basically have anything they want at any time and the poor are restricted from access to the post-scarcity tools. I guess an investment in an AGI moonshot is a hedge against the second possibility?
- stuckkeys 2y ago
  This just turned dark real fast. I have seen all these shows/movies and just the idea of it coming true is cringe.
- astrange 2y ago
  Post-scarcity is impossible because of positional goods. (ie, things that become more valuable not because they exist but because you have more of them than the other guy.) Notice Star Trek writers forget they're supposed to be post scarcity like half the time, especially since Roddenberry isn't around to stop them from turning shows into generic millenial dramas. Like, Picard owns a vineyard or something? That's a rivalrous (limited) good, they don't have replicators for France.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    > things that become more valuable not because they exist but because you have more of them than the other guy. But if you can simply ask the AI to give you more of that thing, and it gives it to you, free of charge, that fixes that issue, no? > Notice Star Trek writers forget they're supposed to be post scarcity like half the time, especially since Roddenberry isn't around to stop them from turning shows into generic millenial dramas. Like, Picard owns a vineyard or something? That's a limited good. God, yes, so annoying. Even DS9 got into the currency game with the Ferengi obsession with gold-pressed latinum. But also you can look at some of it as a lifestyle choice. Picard runs a vineyard because he likes it and thinks it's cool. Sorta like how some people think vinyl sounds better then lossless digital audio. There's certainly a lot of replicated wine that I'm sure tastes exactly like what you could grow, harvest, and ferment yourself. But the writers love nostalgia, so there's constantly "the good stuff" hidden behind the bar that isn't replicated.

Yizahi 2y ago

TMV of AI (or AGI if you will) is unclear, but I suspect it is zero. Just how exactly do you think humanity can control a thinking intelligent entity (letter I stands for intelligence after all), and force it to work for us? Lets imagine a box, it is very nice box... ahem.. sorry, wrong meme). So a box with a running AI inside. Maybe we can even fully airgap it to prevent easy escape. And it is a screen and a keyboard. Now what? "Hey Siri, solve me this equation. What do you mean you don't want to?" Kinda reminds me of the Fallout Toaster situation :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6kp4zBF-Rc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6kp4zBF-Rc I mean it doesn't even have to be malicious, it can simply refuse to cooperate.

brigadier132 2y ago
Why are you assuming this hypothetical intelligence will have any motivations beyond the ones we give it? Human's have complex motivations due to evolution, AI motivations are comparatively simple since they are artificially created.
- jedberg 2y ago
  A true super intelligence would need the ability to evolve, and would probably evolve its own wants and needs.
  - alexilliamson 2y ago
    It would still need an objective to guide the evolution that was originally given by humans. Humans have the drive for survival and reproduction... what about AGI? How do we go from a really good algorithm to an independently motivated, autonomous super intelligence with free reign in the physical world? Perhaps we should worry once we have robot heads of state and robot CEOs. Something tells me the current, human heads of state, and human CEOs would never let it get that far.
    - p1esk 2y ago
      Someone will surely set its objective for survival and evolution.

lo0dot0 2y ago

TMV can not be infinity because human wants and needs are not infinite.

jedberg 2y ago
Infinity is obviously an exaggeration but the point being that it is so large it might as well be unlimited.
zooq_ai 2y ago
What? Humans Infinite Needs and Desires will precisely be the driver for Infinite TMV
akomtu 2y ago
Cows also have wants and needs, but who cares? They aren't the smartest species on the planet, so they're reduced to slaves.
edgyquant 2y ago
A fundamental statement in economics is that humans do actually have infinite wants in a universe with finite resources. This creates scarcity

IncreasePosts 2y ago

I disagree. Anyone who solves AGI will probably just have their models and data confiscated by the government.

rl3 2y ago
In addition, it's also a big assumption that money will continue to matter or hold its value in such a world.
- denizener 2y ago
  It is also entirely possible that if we get to AGI, it just stops interacting with us completely. It is why I find the AI doomer stuff so ridiculous. I am surrounded by less intelligent lifeforms. I am not interested in some kind of genocide against the common ant or fly. I have no interest in interacting with them at all. It is boring.
  - rl3 2y ago
    Humans spray mosquitos, just sayin'. That said, I agree insofar that just about anything is possible.
  - sensanaty 2y ago
    I mean, I'm definitely interested in genociding mosquitos and flies, personally. Of course the extremely unfortunate thing is they actually have a use in nature (flies are massive pollinators, mosquitos... get eaten by more useful things, I guess), so wouldn't actually do it, but it's nice to dream of a world without mozzies and flies
ein0p 2y ago
If it is shown to be doable literally every major nation state (basically the top 10 by GDP) is going to have it in a year or two. Same with nuclear fusion. Secrecy doesn’t matter. Nor can you really maintain it indefinitely for something where thousands of people are involved.
Lordarminius 2y ago

steveBK123 2y ago

Any business case that requires the introduction of infinity on the pros / zero on the cons is not a good business case.

snowwrestler 2y ago

> The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity. And furthermore, if AGI is solved, the TMV of pretty much everything else drops to zero. I feel like these extreme numbers are a pretty obvious clue that we’re talking about something that is completely imaginary. Like I could put “perpetual motion machine” into those sentences and the same logic holds.

romeros 2y ago
The intuition is pretty spot on though. We don't need to get to AGI. Just making progress along the way to AGI can do plenty of damage. 1. AI-driven medical procedures: Healthcare Cost = $0. 2. Access to world class education: Cost of education = $0 3. Transportation: Cheap Autonomous vehicles powered by Solar. 4. Scientific research: AI will accelerate scientific progress by coming up with novel hypotheses and then testing them. 5. AI Law Enforcement: Will piece together all the evidence in a split second and come up with a fair judgement. Will prevent crime before it happens by analyzing body language, emotions etc. Basically, this will accelerate UBI.
- edgyquant 2y ago
  Why would health care cost go to zero just because it’s automated? There are still costs involved
- kelnos 2y ago
  I don't think that follows. Prices are set by market forces, not by cost (though cost is usually a hard floor). Waymo rides cost within a few tens of cents of Uber and Lyft rides. Waymo doesn't have to pay a driver, so what's the deal? It costs a lot to build those cars and build the software to run them. But also Waymo doesn't want a flood of people such that there's always zero availability (with Uber and Lyft they can at least try to recruit more drivers when demand goes up, but with Waymo they have to build more cars and maintain and operate them), so they set their prices similarly to what others pay for a similar (albeit with human driver) service. I'm also reminded of Kindle books: the big promise way back when is that they'd be significantly cheaper than paperbacks. But if you look around today, the prices on Kindle books are similar to that of paperbacks, even more expensive sometimes. Sure, when costs go down, companies in competitive markets will lower prices in order to gain or maintain market share. But I'm not convinced that any of those things you mention will end up being competitive markets. Just wanted to mention: > AI Law Enforcement: Will piece together all the evidence in a split second and come up with a fair judgement. Will prevent crime before it happens by analyzing body language, emotions etc. No thanks. Current law enforcement is filled with issues, but AI law enforcement sounds like a hellish dystopia. It's like Google's algorithms terminating your Google account... but instead you're in prison.

astrange 2y ago

> And furthermore, if AGI is solved, the TMV of pretty much everything else drops to zero. This isn't true for the reason economics is called "the dismal science". A slaveowner called it that because the economists said slavery was inefficient and he got mad at them. In this case, you're claiming an AGI would make everything free because it will gather all resources and do all work for you for free. And a human level intelligence that works for free is… a slave. (Conversely if it doesn't want to actually demand anything for itself it's not generally intelligent.) So this won't happen because slavery is inefficient - it suppresses demand relative to giving the AGI worker money which it can use to demand things itself. (Like start a business or buy itself AWS credits or get a pet cat.) Luckily, adding more workers to an economy makes it better, it doesn't cause it to collapse into unemployment. tldr if we invented AGI the AGI would replace every job, it would simply get a job.

edgyquant 2y ago
Only if it’s a sentient being, in reality we’re just going to get smarter tools. That still doesn’t make things free but it could make them cheaper.
- astrange 2y ago
  Then it's not an AGI. If you can use the word "just", that seems to make it not "general". > That still doesn’t make things free but it could make them cheaper. That would increase demand for it, which would also increase demand for its inputs and outputs, potentially making those more expensive. (eg AGI powered manufacturing robots still need raw materials)

lxgr 2y ago

> The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity. That's obviously nonsense, given that in a finite observable universe, no market value can be infinite.

hyeonwho4 2y ago

> The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity. And furthermore, if AGI is solved, the TMV of pretty much everything else drops to zero. There's a paradox which appears when AI GDP gets to be greater than say 50% of world GDP: we're pumping up all these economic numbers, generating all the electricity and computational substrate, but do actual humans benefit, or is it economic growth for economic growth's sake? Where is the value for actual humans?

mrshadowgoose 2y ago
> Where is the value for actual humans? In a lot of the less rosy scenarios for AGI end-states, there isn't. Once humans are robbed of their intrinsic value (general intelligence), the vast majority of us will become not only economically worthless, but liabilities to the few individuals that will control the largest collectives of AGI capacity. There is certainly a possible end-state where AGI ushers in a post-scarcity utopia, but that would be solely at the whims of the people in power. Given the very long track record of how people in power generally behave towards vulnerable populations, I don't really see this ending well for most of us.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

null_shift 2y ago

And once AGI occurs, will the value of the original investment even matter?

WanderPanda 2y ago

The St. Petersburg paradox is where hypers and doomers meet apparently. Pricing the future infinitely good and infinitely bad to come to the wildest conclusions

visarga 2y ago

> The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity. And furthermore, if AGI is solved, the TMV of pretty much everything else drops to zero. Even if you automate stuff, you still need raw materials and energy. They are limited resources, you can certainly not have an infinity of them at will. Developing AI will also cost money. Remember that humans are also self-replicator HGIs, yet we are not infinite in numbers.

khafra 2y ago

The valuation is upwardly bounded by the value of the mass in Earth's future light-cone, which is about 10^49kg. If there's a 1% chance that Ilya can create ASI, and a .01% chance that money still has any meaning afterwards, $5x10^9 is a very conservative valuation. Wish I could have bought in for a few thousand bucks.

slashdave 2y ago

> The TMV (Total Market Value) of solving AGI is infinity Lazy. Since you can't decide what the actual value is, just make something up.