Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

Exactly. For example, Microsoft was building data centers all over the world since "AGI" was "around the corner" according to them.

Now they are cancelling those plans. For them "AGI" was cancelled.

OpenAI claims to be closer and closer to "AGI" as more top scientists left or are getting poached by other labs that are behind.

So why would you leave if the promise of achieving "AGI" was going to produce "$100B dollars of profits" as per OpenAI's and Microsoft's definition in their deal?

Their actions tell more than any of their statements or claims.

I’m not commenting on the whole just the rhetorical question of why would people leave.

They are leaving for more money, more seniority or because they don’t like their boss. 0 about AGI

Yeah I agree, this idea that people won't change jobs if they are on the verge of a breakthrough reads like a silicon valley fantasy where you can underpay people by selling them on vision or something. "Make ME rich, but we'll give you a footnote on the Wikipedia page"

Yes, this. Microsoft has other businesses that can make a lot of money (regular Azure) and tons of cash flow. The fact that they are pulling back from the market leader (OpenAI) whom they mostly owned should be all the negative signal people need: AGI is not close and there is no real moat even for OpenAI.

> They are leaving for more money, more seniority or because they don’t like their boss. 0 about AGI

Of course, but that's part of my whole point.

Such statements and targets about how close we are to "AGI" has only become nothing but false promises and using AGI as the prime excuse to continue raising more money.

I think the implicit take is that if your company hits AGI your equity package will do something like 10x-100x even if the company is already big. The only other way to do that is join a startup early enough to ride its growth wave.

Another way to say it is that people think it’s much more likely for each decent LLM startup grow really strongly first several years then plateau vs. then for their current established player to hit hyper growth because of AGI.

A catch here is that individual workers may have priorities which are altered due to the strong natural preference for assuring financial independence. Even if you were a hot AI researcher who felt (and this is just a hypothetical) that your company was the clear industry leader and had, say, a 75% chance of soon achieving something AGI-adjacent and enabling massive productivity gains, you might still (and quite reasonably) prefer to leave if that was what it took to make absolutely sure of getting of your private-income screw-you money (and/or private-investor seed capital). Again this is just a hypothetical: I have no special insight, and FWIW my gut instinct is that the job-hoppers are in fact mostly quite cynical about the near-term prospects for "AGI".

Well, there’s clauses in their relationship with OpenAI that sever the relationship when AGI is reached. So it’s actually not in Microsoft’s interests for OpenAI to get there

I haven't heard of this. Can you provide a reference? I'd love to see how they even define AGI crisply enough for a contract.

Wait, aren't they cancelling leases on non-ai data centers that aren't under Microsoft's control, while spending much more money to build new AI focused data centers that that own? Do you have a source that says they're canceling their own data centers?

https://www.datacenterfrontier.com/hyperscale/article/552705... might fit the bill of what you are looking for.

Microsoft itself hasn't said they're doing this because of oversupply in infrastructure for it's AI offerings, but they very likely wouldn't say that publicly even if that's the reason.

> I'd love to see how they even define AGI crisply enough for a contract.

Seems to be about this:

> As per the current terms, when OpenAI creates AGI - defined as a "highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work" - Microsoft's access to such a technology would be void.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-seeks-unlock-inves...

Thank you!

I think you're being very optimistic with the footnote.

> Their actions tell more than any of their statements or claims.

At Microsoft, "AI" is spelled "H1-B".

You're right, but the narrative out of these companies directly refutes this position. They're explicitly saying that 1. AGI changes everything, 2. It's just around the corner, 3. They're completely dedicated to achieving it; nothing is more important.

Then they leave for more money.

Additionally, if you've already got vested stock in Company A from your time working there, jumping ship to Company B (with higher pay and a stock package) is actually a diversification. You can win whichever ship pulls in first.

The 'no one jumps ship if agi is close' assumption is really weak, and seemingly completely unsupported in TFA...

Don't conflate labor's perspective with capital's started position... The companies aren't leaving the companies, the workers are leaving the companies.