Mathematics are not relevant when we have hype and vibes. We can't have facts and projections and no path to profitability distract us from our final goal.
Which, of course, is to donate money to Sama so he can create AGI and be less lonely with his robotic girlfriend, I mean...change the world for the better somehow. /s
I get your point but I think it's debatable. As long as the capabilities increase (and they have, IMO) cost isn't really relevant. If you can reasonably solve problems of a given difficulty (and we're starting to see that), then suddenly you can do stuff that you simply can't with humans. You can "hire" 100 agents / servers / API bundles, whatever and "solve" all tasks with difficulty x in your business. Then you cancel and your bottom is suddenly raised. You can't do that with humans. You can't suddenly hire 100 entry-level SWEs and fire them after 3 months.
Then you can think about automated labs. If things pan out, we can have the same thing in chemistry/bio/physics. Having automated labs definitely seems closer now than 2.5 years ago. Is cost relevant when you can have a lab test formulas 24/7/365? Is cost a blocker when you can have a cure to cancer_type_a? And then _b_c...etc?
Also, remember that costs go down within a few generations. There's no reason to think this will stop.
> You can "hire" 100 agents / servers / API bundles, whatever and "solve" all tasks with difficulty x in your business.
In that bright AGI future, who does my business serve, like who actually are my actual paying clients? Like, the robots are farming, the robots are driving, the robots are "creating" and robots are "thinking", right? In that awesome future, what paid jobs do us humans have, so my clients can afford my amazing entrepreneurial business that I just bootstrapped with the help of 100s of agents? And how did I get the money to hire those 100s of agents in the first place?
> Is cost a blocker when you can have a cure to cancer_type_a? And then _b_c...etc?
Yes, it very much is. The fact that even known and long discovered solutions like insulin for diabetes management are being sold to people at 9x its actual price should speak to you volumes that while it's great to have cures for X, Y and Z, it's the control over the production and development of these cures that is equally, if not much more important for the cure to actually reach people. In this rosy world of yours, do you think Zuck will give you his LLAMAGI-generated cancer cure out of the goodness of his heart? We are talking about the same dude that helped a couple of genocides and added ads in Whatsapp to squeeze the last cent of the people who are trapped with an app that gets progressively worse and more invasive.
https://www.rand.org/news/press/2024/02/01/index1.html
https://systemicjustice.org/article/facebook-and-genocide-ho...
> Also, remember that costs go down within a few generations. There's no reason to think this will stop.
The destruction of the natural world, the fires all around us, the rise of fascism and nationalism, the wars that are spawning all over the place and the fact that white and blue collar jobs are being automated out while soil erosion and PFAS make our land infertile point to a different future. But yeah, I am simply ecstatic at the possibility that the costs of generating a funny picture Ghibli style with a witty caption could go down by 10 to 30%.