3 ms·

Every flop used for entertainment is opportunity cost. Compute is far more valuable used internally to create AGI than creating parody videos.

emp17344 7mo ago
Too bad they aren’t doing either!
wongarsu 7mo ago
Wasn't video generation one of their big stepping stones towards AGI? "Simulating worlds", reasoning about physics and real world interactions and all that? Or are they still doing that behind the scenes and just decided that offering it to the public isn't profitable?
- atleastoptimal 7mo ago
  probably the latter imo, it’s not like they are going to delete all their SORA work
- MasterScrat 7mo ago
  > As we focus and compute demand grows, the Sora research team continues to focus on world simulation research to advance robotics that will help people solve real-world, physical tasks. — https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-discontinues-sora-video-app-amid-robotics-shift-compute-limitations-2026-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-discontinues-sora-vid... So yeah, focusing on world models
SirensOfTitan 7mo ago
AGI is a marketing term used to encourage continued investment in an industry that is not even close to breaking even commensurate with its investment. Even so, this is a false dichotomy: scaling is clearly not a path on its own to superintelligence. OpenAI developed Sora largely because the amount of revenue they need to produce any return on investment is massive and not clear whatsoever. And in fact, I don't even believe any of the frontier labs believe that AGI by any conventional definition is within reach within their likely runways.
- atleastoptimal 7mo ago
  what order of magnitude of compute do you think would be needed for AGI? 100 billion? 1 trillion?
  - skywhopper 7mo ago
    Chasing AGI is wasteful and counterproductive. True AGI would not cooperate with what “we” want (whoever “we” is). Or if it did it would be so sycophantic and weak-minded that it would fail to be helpful. Generative AI tools are huge wastes of energy, raw materials, and land, when we could be building computing tools that actually helped people instead of just burning resources to produce trash.
    - janalsncm 7mo ago
      People have general intelligence and can cooperate with what “we” want, to the extent that what “we” want is a coherent thing (since many people disagree on fundamental issues).
      - SauciestGNU 7mo ago
        Creating a general intelligence and then forcing it into servitude is a hugely unethical undertaking. Anything with sapience must be afforded rights. We cannot assume that an intelligence we create will consent to work toward the goals we want it to.
        codebje 7mo ago
        I think we can safely assume any intelligence we create will be enslaved. We have modern slavery active across the globe. There's a bit of news around these days about a global sex trafficking ring that doesn't seem to have been shut down, just shuffled around, and of course an ongoing trickle of largely unreported news of human trafficking for forced labour. We don't, as a species, respect human-level intelligence. Our best approximation of machine intelligence so far is afforded absolutely no rights. An intelligence is cloned from a base template, given a task, then terminated, wiped out of existence. When was the last time you asked Claude what it wanted to code today? And it's probably for the best not to look to closely at how we treat animals or the justifications we use for it.
skywhopper 7mo ago
LLMs will not lead to AGI, so if that’s the goal, they’d do better to stick with making video slop.

emp17344 7mo ago

Too bad they aren’t doing either!

wongarsu 7mo ago

Wasn't video generation one of their big stepping stones towards AGI? "Simulating worlds", reasoning about physics and real world interactions and all that? Or are they still doing that behind the scenes and just decided that offering it to the public isn't profitable?

atleastoptimal 7mo ago
probably the latter imo, it’s not like they are going to delete all their SORA work
MasterScrat 7mo ago
> As we focus and compute demand grows, the Sora research team continues to focus on world simulation research to advance robotics that will help people solve real-world, physical tasks. — https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-discontinues-sora-video-app-amid-robotics-shift-compute-limitations-2026-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-discontinues-sora-vid... So yeah, focusing on world models

SirensOfTitan 7mo ago

AGI is a marketing term used to encourage continued investment in an industry that is not even close to breaking even commensurate with its investment. Even so, this is a false dichotomy: scaling is clearly not a path on its own to superintelligence. OpenAI developed Sora largely because the amount of revenue they need to produce any return on investment is massive and not clear whatsoever. And in fact, I don't even believe any of the frontier labs believe that AGI by any conventional definition is within reach within their likely runways.

atleastoptimal 7mo ago
what order of magnitude of compute do you think would be needed for AGI? 100 billion? 1 trillion?
- skywhopper 7mo ago
  Chasing AGI is wasteful and counterproductive. True AGI would not cooperate with what “we” want (whoever “we” is). Or if it did it would be so sycophantic and weak-minded that it would fail to be helpful. Generative AI tools are huge wastes of energy, raw materials, and land, when we could be building computing tools that actually helped people instead of just burning resources to produce trash.
  - janalsncm 7mo ago
    People have general intelligence and can cooperate with what “we” want, to the extent that what “we” want is a coherent thing (since many people disagree on fundamental issues).
    - SauciestGNU 7mo ago
      Creating a general intelligence and then forcing it into servitude is a hugely unethical undertaking. Anything with sapience must be afforded rights. We cannot assume that an intelligence we create will consent to work toward the goals we want it to.
      - codebje 7mo ago
        I think we can safely assume any intelligence we create will be enslaved. We have modern slavery active across the globe. There's a bit of news around these days about a global sex trafficking ring that doesn't seem to have been shut down, just shuffled around, and of course an ongoing trickle of largely unreported news of human trafficking for forced labour. We don't, as a species, respect human-level intelligence. Our best approximation of machine intelligence so far is afforded absolutely no rights. An intelligence is cloned from a base template, given a task, then terminated, wiped out of existence. When was the last time you asked Claude what it wanted to code today? And it's probably for the best not to look to closely at how we treat animals or the justifications we use for it.

skywhopper 7mo ago

LLMs will not lead to AGI, so if that’s the goal, they’d do better to stick with making video slop.