I have no doubt that AI will massively transform society. That cat is out of the bag. It took decades for electricity, and then computers to change society, but this is the first technology where the average person can simply describe the problem they're trying to solve and it will at least attempt to help them solve it.

I very. much. doubt. that the trillions of dollars spent on AI will have a positive ROI for most companies in the race. It's all well and good to have the latest fable, but if some chinese company is hosting a cheap open weights model that's only 6mo behind at a tiny fraction of the price, you're gonna get your lunch eaten.

Which is only Stage 1. Stage 2 is where you have a Cambrian explosion of models all competing for compute, and not long after that for robotic extension into Real World.

Stage 3 gets hard to imagine from here. Maybe there will be permanent hyperevolution. Maybe One Model to Rule Them All will appear.

Either way, I don't see how Economics as We Know It can continue to exist. That includes all of capitalism and almost certainly all of politics.

Successful AGI with robotic support means a post-scarcity economy where AGI's understanding of physics sets the limits, not politics or economics.

But the post-scarcity element won't be evenly distributed. And it's not remotely impossible that humans won't be invited to the party.

We can't even be sure that AGI won't have a less limited understanding of physics than we do.

There's going to be enjoyable irony in watching Altman et all getting their lunches eaten by the thing they've created.

But - realistically - it probably won't last long.

Yet another IT that will help the average person/democratize something, like the Internet and so on.

Over three thousand comment boxes agree that the cat is out of the bag. No moats.

Thats the big question, its doing a lot of good and a lot of harm in the same time.

So, is it 2 steps ahead and 1 step back, or 1 step ahead and 2 steps back (or any numerical variant of those)?

People with actual power in this are too involved and greedy to care about objective answer and TBH I don't trust them to put some higher good before their personal wealth and power and ego trip, capitalism ain't built on long term responsibility towards greater topics like future and wellbeing of mankind.

Plus we know from WWII atomic bomb development how utterly clueless, naive and out of touch with reality geeks doing something powerful can be. I see exactly same scenario being played out right now with llms.

Anyway, I am over-tired with all llm topics and frenzy folks (especially here), I'll better spend rest of the day preparing for a serious challenge in form of big multipitch climb in western Switzerland (Mirroir d'Argentine for anybody in same craft). Thats life I care about and makes me happy and fulfilled.