Sure, AI as a tool, as it currently is, will take a very long time to earn back the $B being invested.
But what if someone reaches autonomous AGI with this push?
Everything changes.
So I think there's a massive, massive upside risk being priced into these investments.
It does look like this is now topping out, but it's still not sure.
It seems to me a couple of simple innovations, like the transformer, could quite possibly lead to AGI, and the infrastructure would 'light up' like all that overinvested dark fiber in the 90s.
What if Jesus turns up again? Seems a little optimistic, especially with several leading AI voices suggesting that AGI is at least a lot further away than just parameter expansion.
It might be impossible, or just need some innovations (eg, transformer), but my point is the investments are non-linear.
They are not investing X to get a return of Y.
If someone reaches AGI, current business models, ROI etc will be meaningless.
sure, but its still a moonshot, compared to our current tech. I think such hope leaves us vulnerable to cognitive biases such as sunk cost fallacies. If Jesus comes back that really would change everything, that's the clarion call of many cults that end in tragedy.
I imagine there is fruit that is considerably lower hanging, that has more obvious ROI but is just considerably less sexy than AGI.
What is "autonomous AGI"? How do we know when we've reached it?
It will have agency, it will perform the role. A part of that is that it will have to maintain a running context, and learn as it goes, which seem to be the missing pieces in current llms.
I suppose we'll know, when we start rating AI by 'performance review', like employees, instead of the current 'solve problem' scorecards.