Why Does Capital Still Matter After Superintelligence?

Capital still matters after superintelligence because the decade after artificial general intelligence stays wild, and Leopold Aschenbrenner says there is a lot of money to be made if the bet is done right. Dwarkesh Patel asks why start an investment firm at all when artificial general intelligence is only a few years away. Leopold Aschenbrenner says the screen does not go blank when artificial general intelligence or superintelligence happens.

People underrate the decade after the intelligence explosion. Leopold Aschenbrenner says the explosion is maybe the most wild period, and he says the decade after will be wild too: human institutions next to superintelligence, geopolitics gone crazy, and explosive growth spreading outward. The path runs to the stars and the galaxies. If artificial general intelligence were priced in tomorrow, he says you could maybe make 100x, and probably way more than that because of the sequencing.

Freedom is the other reason. Almost everyone very smart about AI who sees it coming is constrained, often inside the labs, and cannot talk about it. His investment firm is meant as a brain trust on AI, with the best situational awareness in the business, more than the people who manage money in New York. Leopold Aschenbrenner says that same awareness will drive the investing and leave him free to speak in public and advise important actors.