Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Policy on the AI Exponential

darioamodei.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 280 posts

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#151

Post by oudlys »

simianwords wrote: post #130
oudlys wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we plotting against cost? How is the capability advancement vs dollars paid for development? By my read of the (very sparse) data, we're getting linear improvements in capability for super-linear increases in costs. [1] Indicates that by 2027 models will cost $1 billon to train. Dario estimates that model runs will cost $10 billion in 2026 [2]. That to me indicates costs are potentially growing faster than capabi…

>By my read of the (very sparse) data, we're getting linear improvements in capability for super-linear increases in costs. [1] Indicates that by 2027 models will cost $1 billon to train. Dario estimates that model runs will cost $10 billion in 2026 [2]. That to me indicates costs are potentially growing faster than capability. Maybe by quite a bit. This is true and well established. As long as you get any improvemen…

>This is basically a conspiracy theory

I think this is pretty uncharitable, especially when I've provided you with a dataset you can evaluate yourself and an argument you can review for logical inconsistency.

I have worked quite hard to locate data that supports your thesis, I can't find it. I've at least gone to the effort of documenting that search. Before you throw around such strong convictions, I suggest you actually look for yourself.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#152

Post by oudlys »

aspenmartin wrote: post #138
oudlys wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we plotting against cost? How is the capability advancement vs dollars paid for development? By my read of the (very sparse) data, we're getting linear improvements in capability for super-linear increases in costs. [1] Indicates that by 2027 models will cost $1 billon to train. Dario estimates that model runs will cost $10 billion in 2026 [2]. That to me indicates costs are potentially growing faster than capabi…

I appreciate the data here but I don't think the read is quite right; Saying we have linear capability for super-linear cost compares an unbounded variable (dollars) to bounded instruments (because benchmarks saturate). On unbounded measures, growth is exponential; you can see METR time horizons double every ~4-7 months ( https://metr.org/blog/2026-1-29-time-horizon-1-1/ ). And capability being proportional to log(co…

>"On unbounded measures, growth is exponential"

Maybe. There was a great comment in the thread on Fable 5 yesterday about benchmark comparisons between Fable and the latest opus models. here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48464600.

You could be right, but this is the most direct benchmark comparison I could find and it's not that strong.

>the "destroying value" conclusion flips sign on an assumed 15% baseline rework rate. The report's most direct metric is +16% merged PRs per dev.

I discuss this directly in my analysis. There's also an 860% code churn increase ratio. You only need 9% of that to be allocated to wasteful rework to drive throughput flat to the 15% rework baseline. Not to an assumed ideal state where there was no rework.

But even if it were not true, a 16% throughput improvement is pretty weak given the investment - especially given the direct evidence of quality degradation. IMO.

I appreciate you reading my stuff and taking the data seriously. Thank you.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#153

Post by snaking0776 »

aspenmartin wrote: post #37
snaking0776 wrote: post #23

I know this is likely just for IPO hype but when I read things like this I sometimes wonder if I must be missing something. I use agents everyday and find them really useful and they save me a lot of headache. At the same time I find that if I let it self-direct at a high level at all it generally makes bad choices that cause me headaches later so I can’t really give them autonomy. Enough people seem to believe this…

It's nice that people are genuinely curious about this. - All of your observations are absolutely dead on - Yet, we have very very very robust scaling laws that as Dario points out we've had and validated for over a decade. This extends to downstream measures like METR time horizon and compsosite benchmarks like the epoch capability index. - If you look at where you're at now, which is again dead on, you're looking a…

That’s interesting. I commented something about this elsewhere but to me part of the exponential argument that loses me though is that it can often seem like a way to distract from issues that already exist which we should be working to fix. Things like autonomous weapons or mass surveillance are already here and rather terrifying and I would hope that we would dedicate our time to fixing those rather than having industry leaders focus so much on hypotheticals. While I guess the hypothetical scenario could be so bad that we must focus on it, I imagine a world which can’t come up with a way to spread wealth more equally or prevent mass proliferation of surveillance technology through profit seeking behavior will not be able to handle a digital super intelligence. So I keep coming back to the question: why is all I hear these industry leaders talking about is the threat of extinction? Maybe it’s just news coverage but I would love to see a leading lab release research on the health effects of subaudible sound in datacenters or other immediately present issues which would build good will towards these further out concerns.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#155

Post by simianwords »

oudlys wrote: post #151
simianwords wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>By my read of the (very sparse) data, we're getting linear improvements in capability for super-linear increases in costs. [1] Indicates that by 2027 models will cost $1 billon to train. Dario estimates that model runs will cost $10 billion in 2026 [2]. That to me indicates costs are potentially growing faster than capability. Maybe by quite a bit. This is true and well established. As long as you get any improvemen…

>This is basically a conspiracy theory I think this is pretty uncharitable, especially when I've provided you with a dataset you can evaluate yourself and an argument you can review for logical inconsistency. I have worked quite hard to locate data that supports your thesis, I can't find it. I've at least gone to the effort of documenting that search. Before you throw around such strong convictions, I suggest you act…

Respectfully, your link is not very convincing.

But what’s interesting is that you are commenting on a post where Dario is suggesting that LLMs are so extremely powerful that they can take over, help synthesise bioweapons, help in warfare, help in drug discovery — the whole post here is to try and regulate this. If you believe AI can’t even create positive value let alone discover new things then your problem is somewhere else and not in something like “but training costs a lot”.

So it is absolutely strange and contrasting to see you believe that LLMs are so weak as to create negative value while the CEO is asking about regulations because AI is too powerful.

I don’t think I can convince you that AI is actually that powerful.

But let me ask you something directly: if you believe what you believe, you should also acknowledge that AI doesn’t need regulations in the context Dario is proposing since obviously AI can’t do anything he predicts. Do you agree?

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#156

Post by akerl_ »

Spartan-S63 wrote: post #150
tptacek wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is normal, expected, and healthy for stakeholders in a regulatory environment to offer proposals about regulations. What's unhealthy is the proposition that the deliberation process is so fragile that a stakeholder needs to cover every angle, lest they corrupt the outcome.

How is the subject of potential regulation considered a stakeholder?

They’re the most obvious stakeholder… the regulation is going to directly affect them.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#157

Post by eieie11a »

simianwords wrote: post #143

Of all the points, I find only this one fair: Dario is making it hard for competitor startups to come up because he's proposing additional regulations. A good proposal here is: should Anthropic and OpenAI become sort of VC's that fund other competitors?

With what money you fool?

They are deep in the red. That’s before considering reinvestment needs.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#158

Post by simianwords »

eieie11a wrote: post #157
simianwords wrote: post #143

Of all the points, I find only this one fair: Dario is making it hard for competitor startups to come up because he's proposing additional regulations. A good proposal here is: should Anthropic and OpenAI become sort of VC's that fund other competitors?

With what money you fool? They are deep in the red. That’s before considering reinvestment needs.

If you think they are deep in the red why do you want any regulation? They will cease to exist. You don’t have to worry in that case.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#159

Post by eieie11a »

simianwords wrote: post #158
eieie11a wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With what money you fool? They are deep in the red. That’s before considering reinvestment needs.

If you think they are deep in the red why do you want any regulation? They will cease to exist. You don’t have to worry in that case.

[flagged]

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#160

Post by tptacek »

pseudalopex wrote: post #141
tptacek wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is normal, expected, and healthy for stakeholders in a regulatory environment to offer proposals about regulations. What's unhealthy is the proposition that the deliberation process is so fragile that a stakeholder needs to cover every angle, lest they corrupt the outcome.

It is normal, expected, and healthy to offer criticism of self interested proposals. And mock even. What is unhealthy is to imply someone said what they did not.

If that's what this is, a bank-shot snarky criticism of the proposal, fair enough. I read it instead as a criticism of a stakeholder having the temerity to make a proposal in the first place. It's not their job to anticipate and capture all your objections. That's your job!
Post reply on HN