> If we theoretically hit the point where it could do all of its research itself, better than a human, things _would_ be different.
If we theoretically found a way to shield or reverse gravity, things in aviation or space travel would be different. Or if we theoretically found a way to make cold fusion work, things would be very different. :-)
It is in my opinion not a good idea to invest in companies for which the feasibility of the business models depends on the capability of making science-fiction stories work.
I'm skeptical of anyone that has absolute confidence in either direction, to be honest. It's clearly an unknown.
Our current capabilities were science fiction a very short time ago, and we are still improving in multiple areas simultaneously (hardware, algorithms, scaling, data efficiency, inference...). We don't really know what the limit is yet.
Reversing gravity seems to counteract the current knowledge of the physical laws, but human-level intelligence doesn't (it has already been achieved once), and there's enough reason to believe that human-level intelligence itself is not a fundamental limit (energy usage constraints in evotution, brain-size limit fitting through the birth canal, etc).
the likeliness of achieving AGI is an unknown, but it's certainly not 0