“AI 2027 is a Bet Against Amdahl’s Law” by snewman

AI 2027 lies at a Pareto frontier – it contains the best researched argument for short timelines, or the shortest timeline backed by thorough research[1]. My own timelines are substantially longer, and there are credible researchers whose timelines are longer still. For this reason, I thought it would be interesting to explore the key load-bearing arguments AI 2027 presents for short timelines. This, in turn, allows for some discussion of signs we can watch for to see whether those load-bearing assumptions are bearing out.

To be clear, while the authors have short timelines, they do not claim that ASI is likely to arrive in 2027[2]. But the fact remains that AI 2027 is a well researched argument for short timelines. Let's explore that argument.

(In what follows, I will mostly ignore confidence intervals and present only median estimates; this is a gross oversimplification of the results presented in the [...]

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Outline:

(01:17) Timeline to ASI

(06:57) AI 2027 Is Not Strong Evidence for AI in 2027

(08:12) Human-only timeline from SIAR to ASI

(10:46) Reasons The AI 2027 Forecast May Be Too Aggressive

(10:52) #1: Simplified Model of AI R&D

(12:23) #2: Amdahls Law

(14:51) #3: Dependence on Narrow Data Sets

(15:55) #4: Hofstadters Law As Prior

(16:46) What To Watch For

The original text contained 10 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
April 21st, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bfHDoWLnBH9xR3YAK/ai-2027-is-a-bet-against-amdahl-s-law

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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