The only thing that matters is if LLMs with sufficient scaling can become frontier AI researchers kicking off the exponential. Everything else is transient noise.
I agree with your sentiment (about the noise), however I think this over simplifies it a bit. We may get AI that is super-human at frontier research and dramatically accelerates the pace, and still have to wait decades before it disrupts the job market (or maybe never displaces all work).
For one, the answer may depend on material science and chip manufacturing that can take a very long to build out a supply chain for even with super AI help.
And we may just find that the human mind is way more capable than we thought and even with accelerating research it's just a harder problem than anyone expected, even algorithmically.
I expect it to be a bit of both, and from ~2015 - 2025 I was in the "AI is coming for all our jobs" camp. My perspective changed last year after doing a deep dive into latest science on the human brain. (I've kept a very close eye on AI dev progress for 12+ years.
What if the answer is flatly: no? All that other stuff starts to matter a lot then.
Predicating your business decisions on a potential breakthrough that may never come is frankly insane. Imagine if at the dawn of the car industry Ford decided that it's actually a race to build the first flying car and nothing else matters.
I think we know the answer to that already - LLMs show no sign of improving intelligence and instead providers are going down the ‘agentic’ rabbit hole.
There are too many things missing, like a world model, understanding, and taste (in the sense of knowing what is good and what is not good).
Took that nonsense to Capitol Hill, trying to tell a bunch of politicians who knew damn well they are only there as long as they can keep their voters employed. They could have asked their own AI what happens when employment reaches 40-50%. Hint: it's never good. They were going to become another problem the government had to solve.
Also, UBI is non-starter no matter what Sam Altman believes.
openquery•24m ago