TLDR: U.S. AI growth is hitting a wall because the power grid is weak and slow to expand. China has huge surplus power and uses data centers to soak it up. State-led, long-term planning gives China an edge, and the U.S. will fall behind unless it changes.
That is the legal definition of “AGI” used in a contract between OpenAI and Microsoft.
The real definition of AGI is much worse, and refers to an AI basically equivalent in capability to a human across all domains, allowing it to be copied ad infinitum to replace any and all human labor.
As much as AGI in the hands of socialists is the best way to reach fully automated luxury communism, in the hands of capitalists, it is also the way to resolve the class conflict forever by killing everyone else and replacing them with robots.
The book Four Futures explores these 2 possibilities further.
I’m no expert, but reading/listening to stuff by Ed Zitron and Paris Marx, I’m extremely skeptical that antyhing remotely resembling AGI will be made in my lifetime, these LLMs are mostly a party trick that can’t replicate good work or judgement. If anything, these techbros are fanning the flames of the hype simply to get more funding.
Is that a good book?
Highly recommend. It’s written by socialist Peter Frase.
This video by 1Dime in collaboration with Second Thought provides a nice overview of the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5NM68BTpSk
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: