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gigatexal | on: Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B
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 | parent | next
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/ (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 | root | parent | next
If you want safe investment you could always buy land. AGI won't be able to make more of that.
qingcharles | root | parent | next
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 | root | parent
ASI may be interested in purchasing your parcel of land for two extra sludges though
jedberg | root | parent | next
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 | root | parent | next
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 | root | parent
Still those AGIs Servers need land
jedberg | root | parent
With a super AGI it could design a chip that takes almost no space and almost no energy.
edgyquant | root | parent
As humans move into space this statement becomes less true
parpfish | root | parent
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 | parent
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 | root | parent
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.