> but there is still a real possibility that LLMs and the underlying architecture don't pan out with regards to the company's goal of developing anything resembling an AGI.
There is, but in one sense, who cares? The technology is already super useful, even if it ends up not being the end all and be all of AGI. That is, there are really only 2 options:
1. LLMs are an important stepping stone on the way to AGI, in which case OpenAI is in a great position as the company with the best LLM.
2. LLMs turn out to be a "local maximum" in the search for AGI. I think that even if that actually is the case, OpenAI is still in a great position with much of the infrastructure, data, expertise, etc. even if they require totally new model approaches.
Also, I wouldn't worry so much about #2 because if we do ever get AGI, our economy would surely collapse, or else it would look completely unrecognizable to our current economic systems. That is, I'm always struck that when people talk about AGI fears they talk about things like Skynet and misinformation, but nearly our entire society is organized around people selling their labor for a price. I don't know what our economy will look like when/if AGI becomes real, but I do know it will change drastically if it means that the vast majority of people won't be able to price their labor more than $0.