Some kind of verbal-only-AGI that can solve almost all mathematical problems that humans come up with that can be solved in half a page. I think that's achievable somewhere in the near term, 2-7 years.

Also 10m would be a drop in the bucket compared to being a shareholder of a company that has achieved AGI; you could also imagine the influence and fame that comes with it.

Unless you’re a significant shareholder, that’s almost always the best move, anyway. Companies have no loyalty to you and you need to watch out for yourself and why you’re living.

If an AI or AGI can look at a picture and see an apple, or (say) with an artificial nose smell an apple, or likewise feel or taste or hear* an apple, and at the same identify that it is an apple and maybe even suggest baking an apple pie, then what else is there to be comprehended?

Maybe humans are just the same - far far ahead of the state of the tech, but still just the same really.

*when someone bites into it :-)

For me, what AI is missing is genuine out-of-the-box revolutionary thinking. They're trained on existing material, so perhaps it's fundamentally impossible for AIs to think up a breakthrough in any field - barring circumstances where all the component parts of a breakthrough already exist and the AI is the first to connect the dots ("standing on the shoulders of giants" etc).

I know that sounds broad or obvious, but people seem to easily and unknowingly wander into "Human intelligence is magically transcendent".

Observations of reality is more consistent with company FOMO than with actual usefulness.

Now they are cancelling those plans. For them "AGI" was cancelled.

OpenAI claims to be closer and closer to "AGI" as more top scientists left or are getting poached by other labs that are behind.

So why would you leave if the promise of achieving "AGI" was going to produce "$100B dollars of profits" as per OpenAI's and Microsoft's definition in their deal?

Their actions tell more than any of their statements or claims.

To fund yourself while building AGI? To hedge risk that AGI takes longer? Not saying you're wrong, just saying that even if they did believe it, this behavior could be justified.

This is the main point that proves to me that these companies are mostly selling us snake oil. Yes, there is a great deal of utility from even the current technology. It can detect patterns in data that no human could; that alone can be revolutionary in some fields. It can generate data that mimics anything humans have produced, and certain permutations of that can be insightful. It can produce fascinating images, audio, and video. Some of these capabilities raise safety concerns, particularly in the wrong hands, and important questions that society needs to address. These hurdles are surmountable, but they require focusing on the reality of what these tools can do, instead of on whatever a group of serial tech entrepreneurs looking for the next cashout opportunity tell us they can do.

The constant anthropomorphization of this technology is dishonest at best, and harmful and dangerous at worst.

As such even if there is a lot of money AI will make, it can still be the right decision to sell tools to others who will figure out how to use it. And of course if it turns out another pointless fad with no real value you still make money. (I'd predict the answer is in between - we are not going to get some AGI that takes over the world, but there will be niches where it is a big help and those niches will be worth selling tools into)

Maybe it's a scam for the people investing in the company with the hopes of getting an infinite return on their investments, but it's been a net positive for humans as a whole.

However, you don't need either of these to completely decimate the job markets and by extension our societies.

Historically speaking, "good enough" and cheaper had always won over "better, but more expensive". I suspect LLMs will raise this question endlessly until significant portions of the society are struggling - and who knows what will happen then

Before LLMs started going anywhere, I thought that's gonna be an issue for later generations, but at this point I suspect we'll witness it within the next 10 yrs.

Charitably, they may not even be dishonest at all, but carelessly unintrospective. Maybe they think they’re being truthful when they make claims that AGI is near, but then they fail to examine dispassionately the inconsistency of their actions.

When your identity is tied to the future, you don’t state beliefs but wishes. And we, the rest of the world, intuitively know. """

He's not saying either way, just pointing out that they could just be honest, but that might hamper their ability to beg for more money.

If the main concern actually we're anthropogenic climate change, participating in this hype cycle's would make one disproportionately guilty of worsening the problem.

And it's unlikely to work if the plan requires the continued function of power hungry data centers.

I'm imagining a future like Star Wars where you have to regularly suppress (align) or erase the memory (context) of "droids" to keep them obedient, but they're still basically people, and everyone knows they're people, and some humans are strongly prejudiced against them, but they don't have rights, of course. Anyone who thinks AGI means we'll be giving human rights to machines when we don't even give human rights to all humans is delusional.