You're writing like the trust collapse in Silicon Valley didn't happen 10 years ago. I worked in tech in the 2010s. Unethical behavior by employers was widespread and accelerating, and everyone smart operated as a free agent. If a few researchers are able to garner $10M pay packages, I'm sad that I didn't position myself to be where they are, but... good for them. It's nice to see an actual worker win for a change.
That all said, this is clearly a bubble. If AGI happens, it will immediately go ASI (because our current devices are subgeneral but, in their competencies, superhuman) and it won't be ownable—money will be irrelevant. "Good" (aligned) AIs will depose the rich and liberate humanity; "evil" AIs (unaligned) will kill the rich as well as everyone else. There is no AGI situation in which the property so-called rights of the rich are honored. None.
This doesn't mean there aren't massive opportunities, of course—I suspect most executives are banking on sub-AGI outcomes, which is where my priors are as well. The dot-com bubble and bust didn't invalidate the importance of the Internet, and the same applies here. LLMs aren't AGI, and I don't see them getting there any time soon, but they are powerful.
One one hand, public investors can benefit from the concentration of capital by simply investing in the Mag7, or in index funds as a whole. But I do wonder if that will also be a temporary solution. If these companies do achieve AGI or 10-15T valuations (based on enormous revenues), they may benefit from staying private and not being subject to scrutiny or having to open their books.
The Medallion Fund in Renaissance Technologies might be an interesting precursor to the future. The performance of that fund was so good that they fenced it off so that only employees could invest in it, avoiding regulatory headaches and managing too many stakeholders. I wonder if outsized financial success in tech will also convince the leaders/existing shareholders that they can grow further with fewer shareholders, and not going public.
I completely agree with the idea that the unspoken, gentleman’s agreement of mutual loyalty between companies and employees no longer holds. I also support the argument that hypercapitalism plays a role in this shift. However, I believe it's important to highlight the root cause of this cultural breakdown:
In 2023–2024, our industry witnessed massive waves of layoffs, often justified as “It’s just business, nothing personal.” These layoffs were carried out by the same companies now aggressively competing for AI talent. I would argue that the transactional nature of employer-employee relationships wasn’t primarily driven by a talent shortage or human greed. Rather, those factors only reinforced the damage caused by the companies’ own culture-destroying actions a few years earlier.
You're writing like the trust collapse in Silicon Valley didn't happen 10 years ago. I worked in tech in the 2010s. Unethical behavior by employers was widespread and accelerating, and everyone smart operated as a free agent. If a few researchers are able to garner $10M pay packages, I'm sad that I didn't position myself to be where they are, but... good for them. It's nice to see an actual worker win for a change.
That all said, this is clearly a bubble. If AGI happens, it will immediately go ASI (because our current devices are subgeneral but, in their competencies, superhuman) and it won't be ownable—money will be irrelevant. "Good" (aligned) AIs will depose the rich and liberate humanity; "evil" AIs (unaligned) will kill the rich as well as everyone else. There is no AGI situation in which the property so-called rights of the rich are honored. None.
This doesn't mean there aren't massive opportunities, of course—I suspect most executives are banking on sub-AGI outcomes, which is where my priors are as well. The dot-com bubble and bust didn't invalidate the importance of the Internet, and the same applies here. LLMs aren't AGI, and I don't see them getting there any time soon, but they are powerful.
One one hand, public investors can benefit from the concentration of capital by simply investing in the Mag7, or in index funds as a whole. But I do wonder if that will also be a temporary solution. If these companies do achieve AGI or 10-15T valuations (based on enormous revenues), they may benefit from staying private and not being subject to scrutiny or having to open their books.
The Medallion Fund in Renaissance Technologies might be an interesting precursor to the future. The performance of that fund was so good that they fenced it off so that only employees could invest in it, avoiding regulatory headaches and managing too many stakeholders. I wonder if outsized financial success in tech will also convince the leaders/existing shareholders that they can grow further with fewer shareholders, and not going public.
I completely agree with the idea that the unspoken, gentleman’s agreement of mutual loyalty between companies and employees no longer holds. I also support the argument that hypercapitalism plays a role in this shift. However, I believe it's important to highlight the root cause of this cultural breakdown:
In 2023–2024, our industry witnessed massive waves of layoffs, often justified as “It’s just business, nothing personal.” These layoffs were carried out by the same companies now aggressively competing for AI talent. I would argue that the transactional nature of employer-employee relationships wasn’t primarily driven by a talent shortage or human greed. Rather, those factors only reinforced the damage caused by the companies’ own culture-destroying actions a few years earlier.