Ah, I realized there was something else I should have highlighted. You mention you care about pre-ChatGPT takes towards shorter timelines—while compute-centric takeoff was published two months after ChatGPT, I expect that the basic argument structure and conclusions were present well before the release of ChatGPT.
While I didn’t observe that report in particular, in general Open Phil worldview investigations took > 1 year of serial time and involved a pretty significant and time-consuming “last mile” step where they get a bunch of expert review before publication. (You probably observed this “last mile” step with Joe Carlsmith’s report, iirc Nate was one of the expert reviewers for that report.) Also, Tom Davidson’s previous publications were in March 2021 and June 2021, so I expect he was working on the topic for some of 2021 and ~all of 2022.
I suppose a sufficiently cynical observer might say “ah, clearly Open Phil was averse to publishing this report that suggests short timelines and intelligence explosions until after the ChatGPT moment”. I don’t buy it, based on my observations of the worldview investigations team (I realize that it might not have been up to the worldview investigations team, but I still don’t buy it).
I guess one legible argument I could make to the cynic would be that on the cynical viewpoint, it should have taken Open Phil a lot longer to realize they should publish the compute-centric takeoff post. Does the cynic really think that, in just two months, a big broken org would be able to:
Observe that people no longer make faces at shorter timelines
Have the high-level strategy-setting execs realize that they should change their strategy to publish more shorter timelines stuff
Communicate this to the broader org
Have a lower-level person realize that the internal compute-centric takeoff report can now be published when previously it was squashed
Update the report to give it the level of polish that it observably has
Get it through the comms bureaucracy that are probably still operating on the past heuristics and haven’t figured out what to do in this new world
That’s just so incredibly fast for big broken orgs to move.
I was heavily involved in the engineering for the compute takeoffs report, so I can confirm the basic model and argument was in place since at least December 2021, in a spreadsheet model Tom put together.
Tom then spent a year implementing new features, collecting and addressing feedback and doing robustness checks before publication.
And the basically final report was ready well before ChatGPT was released.
Ah, I realized there was something else I should have highlighted. You mention you care about pre-ChatGPT takes towards shorter timelines—while compute-centric takeoff was published two months after ChatGPT, I expect that the basic argument structure and conclusions were present well before the release of ChatGPT.
While I didn’t observe that report in particular, in general Open Phil worldview investigations took > 1 year of serial time and involved a pretty significant and time-consuming “last mile” step where they get a bunch of expert review before publication. (You probably observed this “last mile” step with Joe Carlsmith’s report, iirc Nate was one of the expert reviewers for that report.) Also, Tom Davidson’s previous publications were in March 2021 and June 2021, so I expect he was working on the topic for some of 2021 and ~all of 2022.
I suppose a sufficiently cynical observer might say “ah, clearly Open Phil was averse to publishing this report that suggests short timelines and intelligence explosions until after the ChatGPT moment”. I don’t buy it, based on my observations of the worldview investigations team (I realize that it might not have been up to the worldview investigations team, but I still don’t buy it).
I guess one legible argument I could make to the cynic would be that on the cynical viewpoint, it should have taken Open Phil a lot longer to realize they should publish the compute-centric takeoff post. Does the cynic really think that, in just two months, a big broken org would be able to:
Observe that people no longer make faces at shorter timelines
Have the high-level strategy-setting execs realize that they should change their strategy to publish more shorter timelines stuff
Communicate this to the broader org
Have a lower-level person realize that the internal compute-centric takeoff report can now be published when previously it was squashed
Update the report to give it the level of polish that it observably has
Get it through the comms bureaucracy that are probably still operating on the past heuristics and haven’t figured out what to do in this new world
That’s just so incredibly fast for big broken orgs to move.
I was heavily involved in the engineering for the compute takeoffs report, so I can confirm the basic model and argument was in place since at least December 2021, in a spreadsheet model Tom put together.
Tom then spent a year implementing new features, collecting and addressing feedback and doing robustness checks before publication.
And the basically final report was ready well before ChatGPT was released.