I found the OP insightful and worth a read. Thank you for sharing it on HN.
The only aspect that is poorly analyzed by the OP is business model viability. All players are investing insane amounts of money in infrastructure with the expectation that their future profits will justify all that investment. The winner or winners in the AGI race, they believe, will find the proverbial "pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."
The OP glosses over questions of business model viability with a brief qualitative discussion and very little hard data. For example, to earn an annual return > 10% on every trillion dollars of capital sunk into infrastructure, the owners of that infrastructure must earn free cash flow (operating profit less investment) in excess of $100 billion per year in perpetuity. Is that feasible? Why? How?
There's some alternative analysis here that the current economics aren't too bad <a href="https://x.com/ramez/status/2102506182279573962" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/ramez/status/2102506182279573962
Also another take on AI costs falling <a href="https://x.com/EpochAIResearch/status/2102510281176023529" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/EpochAIResearch/status/2102510281176023529 Methodology is how much it costs to do the same task a while later. Gives fallen ~47% a quarter.
cs702 · · focus · HN ↗
The only aspect that is poorly analyzed by the OP is business model viability. All players are investing insane amounts of money in infrastructure with the expectation that their future profits will justify all that investment. The winner or winners in the AGI race, they believe, will find the proverbial "pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."
The OP glosses over questions of business model viability with a brief qualitative discussion and very little hard data. For example, to earn an annual return > 10% on every trillion dollars of capital sunk into infrastructure, the owners of that infrastructure must earn free cash flow (operating profit less investment) in excess of $100 billion per year in perpetuity. Is that feasible? Why? How?
The OP does not really consider such questions.
tim333 · · focus · HN ↗
Also another take on AI costs falling <a href="https://x.com/EpochAIResearch/status/2102510281176023529" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/EpochAIResearch/status/2102510281176023529 Methodology is how much it costs to do the same task a while later. Gives fallen ~47% a quarter.