“In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.”
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, discussing future updates for ChatGPT on X.com, Oct. 15, 2025.
“Corporate AI investment reached $252.3 billion in 2024, with private investment climbing 44.5% and mergers and acquisitions up 12.1% from the previous year.”
Researchers in the Stanford HAI lab’s 2025 AI Index report, published in April 2025.
When it comes to AGI, the old adage “follow the money” can be an exercise in futility. The money’s everywhere. And nowhere.
As of Sept. 2025, Gartner predicts global spending on AI will total nearly $1.5 trillion for the year.
This number accounts for AI hardware, infrastructure, services, and applications.
What it doesn’t account for, is the myriad other expenditures paid by taxpayers, people who donate to universities, grant funds, and influx capital from other organizations that support the research and development of current and/or advanced artificial intelligence technologies.
We also don’t have a number to associate with the costs incurred by people who’ve been replaced by AI technologies or the businesses that have pivoted to an “AI first” policy, only to pivot right back after the technology proved unbaked.
We know that AGI will, by definition, be derived from artificial intelligence. But the “general” part, that’s a bit more tricky. As we wrote about in last month’s issue, there isn’t a scientifically agreed-upon definition for AGI as of yet (although, as you’ll read later in this month’s, some of the biggest names in the world of AI development recently conspired to suggest one).
Add your voice to the AGI ethics debate — Share your thoughts with us.
Simply put, from the public’s point of view, there’s no way to quantify the exact amount of money being spent to develop AGI to any considerable degree.
Are ChatGPT’s GPUs an AGI expenditure, or an LLM expenditure? Do we double-dip the costs when analyzing the cost-benefit?
Ultimately, a company that has never turned a profit, operating in the fastest-growing expenditure market by dollar value in history, is about to launch the world’s first-ever infinite erotica generator to ChatGPT’s 800 million weekly users.
What could go wrong?
There are no studies on the sociological or psychological effects of giving people a customizable, infinite erotica generator. Nobody has determined how various demographics of people will use such a device, what effect it will have on their lives and livelihoods, and whether or not use of this product will be correlated to negative behaviors such as addiction and social avoidance.
Perhaps it will be a good thing. Altman claims the move is designed to give adults more control over how they use the technology they pay for.
But Altman also says these tools are designed for a specific class of people. “We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues,” he wrote on X.com, adding that the firm realized that “this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems.”
The assumption here seems to be that “mental health problems” represent a static threshold. Either you have them or you don’t. If you don’t, Altman seems to prescribe, you deserve to have greater privileges than if you do.
Setting aside the nonsensical nature of a technology CEO mass-diagnosing 800 million users’ mental health on a weekly basis, the issue ultimately boils down to the fact that, as has been the case since day one, we’re all beta testers for ChatGPT.
What’s that? You’re not, because you don’t use ChatGPT? That’s where you’re wrong. You may not use it, but you know people who do. The at-a-glance math says that at a bare minimum, one in every ten people on the planet use ChatGPT once a week.
Your co-workers, bosses, and employees use ChatGPT. So do lawyers, doctors, politicians, scientists, and military leaders. Ostensibly, no person on planet Earth will be unaffected by whatever consequences come from launching the world’s first public-facing, customizable, instant erotica generator.
You and I weren’t consulted about this. And, despite my best efforts, I’ve yet to find a research study covering the potential negative ramifications of exposing everyone on the planet to the most expensive and sophisticated erotica generator ever created.
But, bottom line: OpenAI has to find a way to turn a profit somehow. And, when you consider that Netflix, Hulu, and Disney have fewer users than ChatGPT does (combined!), there aren’t many other things within the current product suite the company can offer to people who aren’t already willing to pay money to talk to a chatbot.
However, when you consider that PornHub receives about 3.5 billion visitors per month, a significant percentage of which spend money, it appears as though OpenAI’s leadership may have found a solution to its financial challenges.
Ultimately, OpenAI appears to have decided for all humankind that it is ethically acceptable to launch this product/service without conducting long-term studies or seeking input beyond its own walled garden.
Whether you agree with OpenAI or not was never a consideration. And that should bother you.
Best regards,
Tristan Greene
Editor | AGI Ethics News
A veteran AI journalist, Tristan was the creator and managing editor of The Next Web’s “Neural” imprint. He is one of the first and most prolific reporters to cover artificial intelligence as a full-time beat.