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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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Matt Levine's latest reminds us that there is no objective definition of AGI, but that "deciding" that they've achieved AGI allows them to trigger certain contractual provisions. So, on the one hand, such talk can be to pump up the hype chain... but it could also be laying groundwork and making threats for hardball negotiation.

If you read that closely, Microsoft was careful - OpenAI can't declare AGI until they've returned $100bil to them from profits.

My read of the text was not that. There is an economic interest in OpenAI and a commercial deal. The economic interest is just that whatever happens, AGI or not, Microsoft makes up to ~$100B if OpenAI makes a bunch of money. The commercial deal ends when OpenAI "decides" that they've reach AGI.

Frankly, it would even be weirder if it was the other way around. People still kind of think that "achieving AGI" is some sort of factual state of affairs, even if it's ill-defined. It sort of doesn't make sense to define AGI in terms of revenue/profit. I mean, I guess someone could, but I don't think that's what they've done here.