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Comment by healsdata | Hacker News Reader

> The two companies reportedly signed an agreement [in 2023] stating OpenAI has only achieved AGI when it develops AI systems that can generate at least $100 billion in profits.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/26/microsoft-and-openai-have-...

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A sufficiently large profit margin is what constitutes AGI? What a fucking joke.

The real AGI was the money we siphoned along the way.

Absolute Grift Industry

This is pretty good!

“Only” means that it is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.

That's true, but the $100 billion requirement is the only hard qualification defined in earlier agreements. The rest of the condition was left to the "reasonable discretion" of the board of OpenAI. (https://archive.is/tMJoG)

The “reasonableness” is something they could go to court over if necessary, whereas the $100 billion is a hard requirement.

They didn't have a better definition of AGI to draw from. The old Turing test proved to not be a particularily good test. So lacking a definition money was used as a proxy. Which to me seems fair. Unless you've got a better definition of AGI that is solid enough to put in a high dollar value contract?

It's all so unfathomably stupid. And it's going to bring down an economy.

I'm honestly starting to feel embarrassed to even be employed in the software industry now.

I've been telling people I do "computer stuff" since the NFT days.

Five straight years of having to tell everyone who asks about your job that the hottest thing in your industry is a scam sure does wear on a person.

I quit Google last year because I was just done with the incessant push for "AI" in everything (AI exclusively means LLMs of course). I still believe in the company as a whole, the work culture just took a hard right towards kafkaville. Nowadays when my relatives say "AI will replace X" or whatever I just nod along. People are incredibly naive and unbelievably ignorant, but that's about as new as eating wheat.

Hey, don't forget the climate effects too!

> It's all so unfathomably stupid. And it's going to bring down an economy.

Dot-com bubble all over again

Way bigger and deeper than that, there was some slack in the energy situation remaining at that point. Not any more.

with extra stoopid

It's kind of sad, but I've found myself becoming more and more this guy whenever someone "serious" brings up AI in conversation: https://www.instagram.com/p/DOELpzRDR-4/

HN has big problem with reading comprehension. First of all $100B is likely what Microsoft demanded on top of what AGI is defined by OpenAI, which is “ highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work” - [0]. Secondly that is no longer part of this revised agreement, replaced with a review by a panel of experts.

[0] - https://openai.com/charter/

This is the most sick implementation of Goodhart's Law I've ever seen.

>"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"

What appalls me is that companies are doing this stuff in plain sight. In the 1920s before the crash, were companies this brazen or did they try to hide it better?

that's very different from OpenAI's previous definition (which was "autonomous systems that surpass humans in most economically valuable tasks") for at least one big reason: This new definition likely only triggers if OpenAI's AI is substantially different or better than other companies' AI. Because in a world where 2+ companies have similar AGI, both would have huge income but the competition would mean their profit margins might not be as large. The only reason their profit would soar to 100B+ would be because of no competition, right?

It doesn't seem to say 100B a year. So presumably a business selling spoons will also eventually achieve AGI. Also good to know that the US could achieve AGI at any time by just printing more money until hyperinflation lets openai hit their target.

Nice unlock to hyperinflate their way to $100B. I'd buy an AGI spoon but preferably before hyperinflation hits. I'd expect forks to outcompete the spoons though.

So they can just introduce ads in ChatGPT responses, make $100 billion, and call that AGI?

No. When you're thinking about questions like these, it is useful to remember that multiple (probably dozens) professional A-grade lawyers have been paid considerable sums of actual money, by both sides, to think about possible loopholes and fix them.

What would you consider valid methods of generating $100 billion? Enough Max/Pro subscribers?

No. "Pro" subscriptions have nothing to do with AGI, my pet GPS tracker sells those.

We're talking about things that would make AGI recognizable as AGI, in the "I know it when I see it" sense.

So things we think about when the word AGI comes up: AI-driven commercial entity selling AI-designed services or products, AI-driven portfolio manager trading AI-selected stocks, AI-made movie going at the boxoffice, AI-made videogame selling loads, AI-won tournament prizes at computationally difficult games that the AI somehow autonomously chose to take part in, etc.

Most probably a combination of these and more.

Don't worry, it'll be relevant ads, just like google. You're going to love when code output is for proprietary libraries and databases and getting things the way you want will involve annoying levels of "clarification" that'll be harder and harder to use.

I kind of meant this as a joke as I typed this, but by the end almost wanted to quit the tech industry all together.

Just download a few SOTA (free) open-weights models well ahead of that moment and either run them from inside your living-room or store them onto a (cheap) 2TB external hard drive until consumer compute makes it affordable to run them from your living room.

So Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, and Saudi Aramco are AGI

Wow that is so dumb. Can these addicts think about anything else than profits?

That's a pretty blatant public admission that corporations fundamentally regard intelligent entities as profit sources.

So what, there just won't be a word for general intelligence anymore, you know, in the philosophical sense?

lol, this is "autopilot" and "full self driving" all over again.

Just redefine the terms into something that's easy to accomplish but far from the definition of the terms/words/promises.

I know, they could get a big banner that says MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Apparently the US military is for sale, so they probably could hang it up on a battleship even.

Well this is why it's framed that way:

>This is an important detail because Microsoft loses access to OpenAI’s technology when the startup reaches AGI, a nebulous term that means different things to everyone.

Not sure how OpenAI feels about that.

So if their erotic bot reaches $100b in profit, they will declare AGI? lol

Wait until they announce that they’ve been powering OnlyFans accounts this whole time.

Given the money involved, they may be contractually obliged to?

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