Friday, April 14, 2023

The First Trillionaire

   If you are investing for the future, you need to have some sort of prediction on how AI will develop over time. If you believe in short timelines and that AGI will arrive in the next ten years, you probably shouldn't invest in Sears or Walmart. Maybe it is the case that some small, private AI lab will develop AGI and quickly become the real superpower of the world, but it is also likely that a large tech giant acquires the small lab and scales up the innovation. Given that compute seems to be a constraining resource, you should probably invest in companies with the scale to train these massive models.

    Should you invest in AI safety firms? Or tech companies with lots of AI safety standards? Probably not, as they will likely move slower than some of the "move fast and break things and maybe kill all of humanity in the process" firms that are bound to spring up. Still, I see AI capabilities research and AI alignment research as two sides of a similar coin, so it could be the case that the companies more focused on safety could create better products. Maybe these products conform more to consumer expectations, maybe they meet new regulations, or maybe consumers are less scared of them.

    If AGI actually arrives, we could see massive GDP increases across the world. It probably doesn't matter what you are invested in as long as you are broadly diversified, if the stock market quadruples in three months. More likely in my opinion is a small subset of individuals receive all the money and power, as only the actual owners of the AGI become trillionaires. In my mind it is clear that the first trillionaire will be someone who owns a very large stake in an AI development company. The real question is, will there be a second?

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