How useful is the information you get from working inside an AI company?

This post was drafted by Buck, and substantially edited by Anders. "I" refers to Buck. Thanks to Alex Mallen for comments. People who work inside AI companies get access to information that I only get later or never. Quantitatively, how big a deal is this access? Here’s an operationalization of this. Consider the following two ways my knowledge could be augmented: I get a crystal ball that tells me all the information I would know n months in the future.