Long Timelines to Advanced AI Have Changed My Mind

"Long" timelines to advanced AI have gotten crazy short 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 
 

 

 

 

 
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 The prospect of reaching human-level AI in the 2030s should be jarring

 Helen Toner Apr 01, 2025 163 21 21 Share Welcome to Rising Tide! I’m publishing 3 posts this week to celebrate the launch of this Substack—this is post #1. New posts will be more intermittent after this week. Subscribe to get them straight in your inbox: 

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 It used to be a bold claim, requiring strong evidence, to argue that we might see anything like human-level AI any time in the first half of the 21st century. This 2016 post , for instance, spends 8,500 words justifying the claim that there is a greater than 10% chance of advanced AI being developed by 2036. 

 (Arguments about timelines typically refer to “timelines to AGI,” but throughout this post I’ll mostly refer to “advanced AI” or “human-level AI” rather than “AGI.” In my view, “AGI” as a term of art tends to confuse more than it clarifies, since different experts use it in such different ways. 1 So the fact that “human-level AI” sounds vaguer than “AGI” is a feature, not a bug—it naturally invites reactions of “human-level at what?” and “how are we measuring that?” and “is this even a meaningful bar?” and so on, which I think are totally appropriate questions as long as they’re not used to deny the overall trend towards smarter and more capable systems.) 

 Back in the dark days before ChatGPT, proponents of “short timelines” argued there was a real chance that extremely advanced AI systems would be developed within our lifetimes—perhaps as soon as within 10 or 20 years. If so, the argument continued, then we should obviously start preparing—investing in AI safety research, building international consensus around what kinds of AI systems are too dangerous to build or deploy, beefing up the security of companies developing the most advanced systems so adversaries couldn’t steal them, and so on. These preparations could take years or decades, the argument went, so we should get to work right away.

 Opponents with “long timelines” would counter that, in fact, there was no evidence that AI was going to get very advanced any time soon (say, any time in the next 30 years). 2 We should thus ignore any concerns associated with advanced AI and focus instead on the here-and-now problems associated with much less sophisticated systems, such as bias, surveillance, and poor labor conditions. Depending on the disposition of the speaker, problems from AGI might be banished forever as “science fiction” or simply relegat

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