Shortening Timelines: There’s No Buffer Anymore

It seems that there are two points of particular relevance in predicting AGI timelines: (i) the expectation, or the point at which the chance of AGI is believed to be 50% and (ii) the last date as of which the chance of AGI is believed to be insignificant.

For purposes of this post, I am defining AGI as something that can (i) outperform average trained humans on 90% of tasks and (ii) will not routinely produce clearly false or incoherent answers. (I recognize that this definition is somewhat fuzzy with trained and tasks both being terms susceptible to differing interpretations and difficulty in application; AGI, like obscenity, lends itself to a standard of “I’ll know it when I see it.”)

Recent events have lead me to update my timelines. Like most everyone I am aware of, my timeline has shortened. (And, obviously, the facts that: (i) updates across people seem to be moving consistently in one direction (though I am not aware of any detailed studies of this) and (ii) my own updates have moved consistently in one direction, suggest that the estimates may be biased.)

The date by which I think there is a 50% chance of AGI is now solidly in the 2030s instead of the 2040s. This doesn’t seem to be that significant a change, though more time to prepare is likely better than less. Our civilizational capacity is unfortunately unlikely to materially increase between 2035 and 2045.

Far more importantly, last year at this time I was confident there was essentially no chance AGI would be developed before January 1, 2029. Four months ago, I was confident there was essentially no chance AGI would be developed before July 1, 2027. But now, there is no longer a date with which I can complete the sentence “I am confident there is essentially no chance AGI will be developed before...”.

To be sure, I think the chance that AGI will be developed before January 1, 2029 is still low, on the order of 3% or so; but there is a pretty vast difference between small but measurable and “not going to happen”.