I do think re: (2), whether such labs actually are amassing “the financial leeway to [build AGI before simpler models can be made profitable]” is somewhat a function of your beliefs about timelines. If it only takes $100M to build AGI, I agree that labs will do it just for the trophy, but if it takes $1B I think it is meaningfully less likely (though not out of the question) that that much money would be allocated to a single research project, conditioned on $100M models having so far failed to be commercializable.
Agree with (1) and (~3).
I do think re: (2), whether such labs actually are amassing “the financial leeway to [build AGI before simpler models can be made profitable]” is somewhat a function of your beliefs about timelines. If it only takes $100M to build AGI, I agree that labs will do it just for the trophy, but if it takes $1B I think it is meaningfully less likely (though not out of the question) that that much money would be allocated to a single research project, conditioned on $100M models having so far failed to be commercializable.