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Comment by entropi | Hacker News Reader

Agreed, and I suspect the explanation is that these plays are done not to search for a true AGI, but to drive up hype (and 'the line').

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The higher the line goes, the higher the expected value of return on investment. It’s a virtuous cycle based on a bet on all horses, but since the EV is so high for first mover advantage for AGI, it might be worth it to overleverage compared to the past for your top picks? These are still small sums for Zuckerberg to pay personally, let alone for Meta to pay. This is already priced in.

There are quite a few assumptions in your message. But here is, I think, the most crucial one:

> but since the EV is so high for first mover advantage for AGI

is it? why? I cant see why this should be the case. where exactly do you think the "moat" for AGI will come from?

At this level, you probably don't need a moat to recoup your surplus sunk costs due to AI talent acquisition. You just need a good day in the market, likely the same day you announce you've achieved AGI. It's kayfabe accounting.

Any announcement of AGI will be immediately controversial. Valuation increases will depend on whether people actually believe it and what they're able to sell. Expect public opinion to be fickle and share prices to be volatile.

Decent odds we see some pretenders make that announcement before the real deal. A company with the real deal would probably make bank, but I don't pretend to know when that will come or who that might be.

I don't think that price movement is necessary to make money as an outsize shareholder, especially during high volatility. Zuck knows how to buy the market leader early, so we might have already seen the creator of AGI be poached by Meta, they just haven't realized what they know yet until they work with others in the org.

It's possible that they won't be the early bird to catch the AGI worm, but sometimes the investment squeeze required to be the first mover isn't rewarded in market juice, especially if the second mouse can use your AGI to create their own AGI cheese.

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