The $AI discourse is schizophrenic.

One minute people are breathlessly predicting AGI/ASI will arrive any day now and fundamentally reshape civilization.

The next minute they're panicking because Mistral is 9 months behind OpenAI on some benchmark.

Pick a lane.

If you actually believe we're on the verge of recursive self-improving superintelligence, then who's ahead in the model race today is utterly irrelevant. It's like worrying about which telegraph company has better infrastructure in 1875 when you think the internet is coming in 1876.

But if you're sweating the competitive positioning of specific AI labs, then you clearly don't believe your own hype about imminent transformative AI.

Most of the $AI investment thesis is built on this contradiction. People want the valuation multiples that come from "this changes everything" while simultaneously trading on incremental product cycles like it's just another software category.

Can't have it both ways. Either this is the most important technology in human history and current market share means nothing, or it's a normal innovation cycle and we should value these companies like normal companies.

My guess: it's somewhere in between, which means both the doomers and the hype merchants are wrong.