AGI is still 30 years away — Ege Erdil & Tamay Besiroglu
Summary
Ege Erdil and Tamay Besiroglu discuss their views on AI timelines, the concept of an intelligence explosion, and the potential for explosive economic growth driven by AI. They explore the importance of complementary innovations, hardware scaling, and the broader economic context in achieving transformative AI advancements, while also addressing potential bottlenecks and regulatory challenges.Episode description
Ege Erdil and Tamay Besiroglu have 2045+ timelines, think the whole "alignment" framing is wrong, don't think an intelligence explosion is plausible, but are convinced we'll see explosive economic growth (economy literally doubling every year or two).
This discussion offers a totally different scenario than my recent interview with Scott and Daniel.
Ege and Tamay are the co-founders of Mechanize (disclosure - I’m an angel investor), a startup dedicated to fully automating work. Before founding Mechanize, Ege and Tamay worked on AI forecasts at Epoch AI.
Watch on Youtube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - AGI will take another 3 decades
(00:22:27) - Even reasoning models lack animal intelligence
(00:45:04) - Intelligence explosion
(01:00:57) - Ege & Tamay’s story
(01:06:24) - Explosive economic growth
(01:33:00) - Will there be a separate AI economy?
(01:47:08) - Can we predictably influence the future?
(02:19:48) - Arms race dynamic
(02:29:48) - Is superintelligence a real thing?
(02:35:45) - Reasons not to expect explosive growth
(02:49:00) - Fully automated firms
(02:54:43) - Will central planning work after AGI?
(02:58:20) - Career advice
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