Progress in artificial intelligence

You are seeing multiple competing different groups all trying to claim the idea of AI products, and you're actually seeing real capability gain.

Let's say AI progress stopped today, right? So no further progress, which is not going to happen, but let's just say this as a thought exercise.

If companies and people were to take full advantage of the capabilities that exist today,

Yes.

I think cyber definitely is coming.

Yeah.

And lastly, on AI progress, robotics.

I was with RJ Skaring yesterday as the CEO of Rivian, who mentioned to me that he believes robotics is the, people don't appreciate how much, how quickly robotics is advancing.

That does sound wonderful, but let's get back to the interview.

Amadei talked about how he felt it was highly unlikely for data to be a blockage to further AI progress.

And just personally, I found his wistful tone somewhat fascinating.

You mentioned that data is likely not to be the constraint.

I am excited to dig in and to talk a bit about what AI can and can't do for us.

When you're thinking through your AI strategy, what is it that you want to pursue and um this is uh select as uh at least i mentioned these are selections from you know an online course that that i offer and i think that it's been resonating with a number of you know company boards executives senior executives ctos you know ceos and so on that i've spoken with and i hope it resonates with you as well so let's start from the question we're trying to answer so What does it feel like as time is going on in terms of the amount of AI progress that's going? Now, you're probably tracking that there feels like there's a new model every week.

In fact, there was a new model last week.

It might be gone today.

Ramez has spent years thinking and writing and investing around technological progress in energy and artificial intelligence, and what advances in these areas could mean for the future of the global economy.

Today's conversation will focus on the pace of AI progress, the roadblocks that could stand in its way, and what all this could mean for long-term economic growth.

Hope you enjoy it.

Ramez, welcome to the podcast.

Where are we right now? Um, I ju- uh, as we're recording this, OpenAI just released all these, you know, mathematical proofs and people are being wowed by that.

Does that, does that...

Wherever you think we are at in the world of AI progress, does that kind of result change your opinion?

It's amazing.

"We are actively pursuing these ideas.

Still, I expect general AI progress to increasingly be bottlenecked by confidence in monitoring." Okay, so that's interesting.

Generally These newer and smarter models are not relying, as I said, on externalizing their chains of thought to the same degree as they have been.

Something OpenAI is doing during pre-training, you know, making that better, is making them smart enough, like immediately after pre-training, to rely less upon long chains of thought.

Uh, it would be a wild card, and probably of not that much use to anyone.

No one wants a loose cannon.

So Jacob writes, "At the same time, even with the uncertainty that comes from anticipated broad AI progress and the need to build defensive systems, we must not let that become an excuse for recklessness.

The idea of racing forward at all costs seems absurd once one internalizes the seriousness of the stakes.

The conclusion I came to is that we have not seen mass job loss because of AI, but it could happen way faster than people realize.

You mentioned the engine efficiency argument, and AI progress has been very smooth, this exponential in a lot of different domains, but we feel it as tipping points that get reached.

where the AI could not write code, and then it can.

The AI could not use a computer, and then it can.