Sora shutdown is a good early example of what private AI companies will do when they achieve AGI

A viral post on the r/singularity subreddit, authored by user Friendly_Willingness, has ignited discussion by framing OpenAI's highly restricted access to its Sora video generation model as a strategic precedent. The argument posits that this 'shutdown' of widespread availability is not merely about safety or scaling, but a dry run for the behavior of private AI firms when they believe they are on the cusp of achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). The core thesis is that at that critical juncture, companies will funnel all available computational resources inward, prioritizing an all-out sprint to be the first to reach Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), perceived as the ultimate winner-takes-all milestone.

This strategic shift would have drastic consequences for the current AI ecosystem. The post predicts the effective end of the current subscription-based service model for cutting-edge models, with public access either completely cut off or subjected to price increases of 100x or more. Furthermore, the intense, privatized demand for computing power would cause hardware prices for both data-center GPUs (like NVIDIA's H100) and consumer-grade components to skyrocket, creating shortages and inflating costs across the entire tech industry. The discussion highlights a growing tension between the open, democratized vision of AI and the closed, competitive reality of a high-stakes corporate race toward a transformative technological threshold.