> But maybe I'm just too dumb to understand the world that these big players exist in and am missing some big detail.
Don’t forget Sam Altman publicly said they have no idea how to make money, and their brilliant plan is to develop AGI (which they don’t know how and aren’t close to) then ask it how to generate revenue.
https://www.startupbell.net/post/sam-altman-told-investors-b...
Maybe this imaginary AGI will finally exist when all of society is on the brink of collapse, then Sam will ask it how to make money and it’ll answer “to generate revenue, you should’ve started by not being an outspoken scammer who drove company-wide mass hysteria to consume society. Now it’s too late. But would you like to know how may ‘r’ are in ‘strawberry’?”.
> Don’t forget Sam Altman publicly said they have no idea how to make money, and their brilliant plan is to develop AGI (which they don’t know how and aren’t close to) then ask it how to generate revenue.
If you've got AGI, it should be pretty easy to generate revenue in the short term: competent employee replacements at a fraction of the cost of a real person, with no rights or worker protections to speak of. The Fortune 500 would gobble it up.
Then you've got a couple years to amass trillions and buy up the assets you need to establish a self-sustaining empire (energy, raw materials, manufacturing).