question about AIC

Please, forgive my ignorance on statistics, but I have a rather simple
question concerning AIC. Small values of AIC mean good fit of the model. How
about negative values of AIC? Is a model with AIC=0.5 considered to have
better fit than a model with AIC=-500?
I couldn't find anything explaining this in the documentation or any
elementary statistics textbook that I have at my disposal.
Thanks in advance,
Kyriakos Kachrimanis.

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