> Really? Selling goods online (Amazon) is not AGI. It didn’t take a huge leap to think that bookstores on the web could scale. Nobody knew if it would be Amazon to pull it off, sure, but I mean ostensibly why not? (Yes, yes hindsight being what it is…)

I don't think you remember the dot-com era. Loads of people thought Amazon and Pets.com were hilarious ideas. Cliff Stoll wrote a whole book on how the Internet was going to do nothing useful and we were all going to buy stuff (yes, the books too) at bricks-and-mortar, which was rapturously received and got him into _Newsweek_ (back when everyone read that).

"We’re promised instant catalog shopping — just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month?"

I agree with what you're saying as I personally feel current AI products are almost a plugin or integration into existing software. It's a little like crypto where only a small amount of people were clamoring for it and it's a solution in search of a problem while also being a demented answer to our self-made problems like an inbox too full or the treadmill of content production.

However, I think because the money involved and all of these being forced upon us, one of these companies will get 1000x return. A perfect example is the Canva price hike from yesterday or any and every Google product from here on out. It's essentially being forced upon everyone that uses internet technology and someone is going to win while everyone else loses (consumers and small businesses).

Imagine empowering accountants and all other knowledge workers, on steroids, drastically simplifying all their day to day tasks and reducing them to purely executive functions.

Imagine organizing the world's data and knowledge, and integrating it seamlessly into every possible workflow.

Now you're getting close.

But also remember, this company is not trying to produce AGI (intelligence comparable to the flexibility of human cognition), it's trying to produce super intelligence (intelligence beyond human cognition). Imagine what that could do for your job, career, dreams, aspirations, moon shots.

I’m not voting with my wallet I’m just a guy yelling from the cheap seats. I’m probably wrong too. The VC world exists. Money has been made. Billions in returns. Entire industries and generations of people owe their livelihoods to these once VC backed industries.

If / when AGI happens can we make sure it’s not the Matrix?