AGI is What Money Wishes it Was

ByDan March 31, 2025May 8, 2026 May 8, 2026

It’s no wonder all the money is flooding into AGI. 

It will be no mystery when even more of the money in the world is hurled into explicit building or controlling AGI.

Why?

Because AGI is what money wishes it was.

Watch the full video essay here:

Money is power (potentia) when the humans involved have agreed to use that currency as a medium of exchange. AGI needs no such permission – it represents agency and possibilities beyond what cooperating humans can marshal.

Let’s compare the two:

Money

Money is power, or – more accurately – a kind of liquid potentia.

It is the power to enact one’s values, preferences, or will.

With enough raw cash, you can acquire:

• Mansions
• The company of attractive women, or myriad other experiences
• Food of any kind
• Weapons, or even armies (“Crassus used to say that a man could only consider himself truly rich when his annual income could raise and maintain a Roman legion.” Pliny the Elder)
• NVIDIA GPUs
• Talented people to achieve your goals, or invent new technologies

But money doesn’t turn into these things by magic.

Money “works” when humans agree to a medium of exchange and act in accordance with that shared understanding of value.

At some point, single-celled organisms figured out ways to communicate with other cells, and to organize and coordinate in new and magnificent ways – and in many ways, the innovation of “money” allowed for the same among humans.

AGI

AGI is what money wishes it was.

If it is AGI at all (and not merely a tool for a specific job), then it is pure agency, pure power, without any necessary agreement between hominids.

Money is potentia enacted by other humans who share an agreement.

Here’s a way to think about it:

All money will eventually flow to the creation or control of AGI because: 

• AGI can directly exert power in the world (including making money). Advantages in AGI power are ultimate advantages, and can help achieve anything AGI can achieve, and much more, and much more quickly.
• Wielding AGI even for a short time (before it ends us) represents the highest final position of power imaginable. Eventually, AGI almost certainly expands to pursue goals and aims beyond human control or imagination – so bringing it into existence represents the final flex, the final achievement.

Why AGI Will Attract All the Money

This is all downstream of the Ambition Singularity and its resulting Financial Singularity.

Ambition Singularity hypothesis:

“At some point in the 21st century, over 90% of the most ambitious persons on Earth will be working directly or indirectly to either create or control AGI/post-human intelligence.”

Financial Singularity hypothesis:

“At some point in the 21st century, over 50% of all capital in first world economies will be allocated directly or indirectly to either creating or controlling AGI/post-human intelligence.”

Here’s an infographic from the full Financial Singularity article:

With the ultimate power within grasp, transformation and totally pausing AGI and technological development is impossible. Posthumanism is well underway already. 

Freezing life in the year 2025 is not an option. Maintaining the human form is not possible. The eternal hominid kingdom is not on the table.

There are only four long-term viable futures for humanity:

We must aim to ensure that what is born beyond us is a Worthy Successor.

For us, the bell already tolls.