compute, will, agi

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Global capital markets are already a kind of weak general intelligence: a distributed agent that conscripts billions of human brains as its compute and optimizes a single scalar—return on investment. The current AI boom can be read as capital’s will to port itself off wetware and onto silicon. In that frame, AGI is less something we build and more something capital becomes when it no longer needs us as its substrate.

Because FLOPs + fundraises are legible, we fixate on them, but a few people with uncompromising will can sometimes substitute for both. The smooth curves of dollars and petaflops may not tell you when AGI shows up; the jagged, hard‑to‑measure distribution of intent might.

As the marginal cost of doing things falls - because compute is cheap and capital is abundant—what becomes scarce is knowing what to do. In a world where AGI makes action a commodity, the binding constraint shifts from servers and money to credible, coherent will. Owning models or GPUs is table stakes; being able to articulate and align goals may be the new leverage.