[ashconnor]

OpenAI is depending on a *breakthrough* in order to produce a product that will provide a return on investment.

This "breakthrough" is often touted as AGI or something similar to it which to me is even more risky than a nuclear fusion startup as:

1. Fusion has had some recent breakthroughs that could result in a commercially viable reactor eventually.

2. Fusion has a fundamentally sound theoretical basis unlike producing AGI (or something like it).

[pzo]

even if we don't reach AGI anytime soon there is still many new applications for current AI that we haven't explored too much yet. Robotics will be a huge one IMO.

[oblio]

The problem with your comment is: would this approach support these valuations? And also for robotics, is a company like OpenAI even anywhere near being able to use their tech for robotics?

[pzo]

OpenAI made an agreement with Figure - robotic company. Today figure is supposed to announce something so let's see how is the progress going.

Doing a lot of tedious tasks by robots already will be a big industry. They don't have to be super smart.

Google made a lot of money with ads in Google search - eventually perplexity or searchGPT will have some ads. Maybe they can also make money with affiliate links.

Sora et al will shake movie industry and commercials.

Voice assistants and chatbots already change call centers.

It's been just ~1.5 years since gpt3.5 release and 2 years since stable diffusion - e.g. iphone 2g wasn't mainstream and they sold only 6 million devices in first year, today they sell 250 million iphones a year

[JackYoustra]

Idk, AGI (at least in the information domain) has a sound theoretical basis, the scaling laws seem pretty strong for now and there's a track record of shattering human benchmarks.

[JackYoustra]

Curious what the objections are?

[wwtrv]

Calculators also had a track record of shattering human benchmarks.

Also saying something like:

> has a sound theoretical basis

Without backing it up at all hardly makes much sense...