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by ekidd 25 days ago
If it's merely human equivalent but somehow costs a lot more than actual humans, then it's actually pretty marginal until the cost comes down. There are a lot of humans.

So you could technically have AGI without entering a true AGI era. "95% as good as an average Harvard graduate across the board, but it costs $5 million/year to run" is impressive and scientifically interesting, but not economically transformative.

But if it costs $50,000/year to run, then everything changes really fast. And not necessarily in a good way.
2 comments
sdf4j 25 days ago
Plenty of C-level executives have salaries around that number. Replacing them with AGI would be cost-effective. Cost is contingent, shouldn't be part of the AGI definition.
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scotty79 25 days ago
You could replace them with a potato and get similar economic outcomes for their companies.

They get this much money not because their work is worth this much. It's just how the system is set up.

AGI couldn't be CEO BECASUE it can't receive millions of dollars in compensation the same way potato can't. Getting this much money is what the CEO does. Apart from that they do very little when summed up.

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yCombLinks 25 days ago
Well, let's look at someone like Einstein. Just for argument's sake let's say he has a flat salary demand of $5 million dollars. It's not cost effective to hire Einstein to write your CRUD apps in this situation. That doesn't mean there isn't somewhere that he would have a value of $5 million.
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ekidd 25 days ago
No insult to the Harvard grads I know. But the median grad isn't Einstein, and they won't magically earn back $5 million/year. They're not that special, on average.

Now, if you have an AGI that can reliably and repeatedly do Einstein-level science, then I'd argue that we're starting to talk about ASI, aka, "superintelligence." Which would be providing something that humans can't consistently produce at any cost. So cost becomes much less relevant.

But if the best you can do is replace an ordinary smart human for $5 million/year, you have to compete with ordinary smart humans. Who are abundant and who very rarely cost more than $500,000/year, if you're willing to shop around and gamble a bit.

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