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The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

garymarcus.substack.com

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Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#111

Post by jmccambridge »

I found the lack of GDP projections surprising, because they are readily observable and would offer a clear measure of economic impact (up until 'everything dies') - far more definitively than the one clear-cut economic measure that is given in the report: market cap for the leading AI firm.

We can actually offer a very conservative threshold bet: maximum annual United States real GDP growth will not exceed 10% for any of the next five years (2025 to 2030). Even if the AI eats us all in e.g., Dec 2027 the report clearly suggests by it's various examples that we will see measurable economic impact in the 12 months or more running up to that event.

Why 10%? Because that's a few points above the highest measured real GDP growth rate of the past 60 years: if AI is having truly world-shattering non-linear effects, it should be able to grow the US economy a bit faster than a bunch of random humans bumbling along. [0]

(And it's quite conservative too, because estimated peak annual real GDP growth over the past 100 years is around 18% just after WW2, where you had a bunch of random humans trying very hard.) [1]

[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/996758/rea-gdp-growth-un...

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#112

Post by ewoodrich »

bpodgursky wrote: post #89
Aurornis wrote: post #52

Some useful context from Scott Alexander's blog reveals that the authors don't actually believe the 2027 target: > Do we really think things will move this fast? Sort of no - between the beginning of the project last summer and the present, Daniel’s median for the intelligence explosion shifted from 2027 to 2028. We keep the scenario centered around 2027 because it’s still his modal prediction (and because it would b…

Do you feel that you are shifting goalposts a bit when quibbling over whether AI will kill everyone in 2030 or 2035? As of 10 years ago, the entire conversation would have seemed ridiculous. Now we're talking about single digit timeline differences to the singularity or extinction. Come on man.

I'm in my 30s and remember my friend in middle school showing me a website he found with an ominous countdown to Kurzweil's "singularity" in 2045.

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#113

Post by amarcheschi »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #107
amarcheschi wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other writings from Scott Alexander on scientific racism are also another good point imho

What specifically would you highlight as being particularly egregious or wrong? As a general rule, "it's icky" doesn't make something false.

And it doesn't make it true either

Human biodiversity theories are a bunch of dogwhistles for racism

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Biodiversity_Institute

And his blog's survey reports a lot of users actually believing in those theories https://reflectivealtruism.com/2024/12/27/human-biodiversity...

(I wasn't referring to this Ai 2027 in specific)

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#114

Post by throw310822 »

Aurornis wrote: post #52

Some useful context from Scott Alexander's blog reveals that the authors don't actually believe the 2027 target: > Do we really think things will move this fast? Sort of no - between the beginning of the project last summer and the present, Daniel’s median for the intelligence explosion shifted from 2027 to 2028. We keep the scenario centered around 2027 because it’s still his modal prediction (and because it would b…

Yes and no, is it actually important if it's 2027 or 28 or 2032? The scenario is such that a difference of a couple of years is basically irrelevant.

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#115

Post by throw310822 »

ewoodrich wrote: post #112
bpodgursky wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel that you are shifting goalposts a bit when quibbling over whether AI will kill everyone in 2030 or 2035? As of 10 years ago, the entire conversation would have seemed ridiculous. Now we're talking about single digit timeline differences to the singularity or extinction. Come on man.

I'm in my 30s and remember my friend in middle school showing me a website he found with an ominous countdown to Kurzweil's "singularity" in 2045.

> ominous countdown to Kurzweil's "singularity" in 2045

And then it didn't happen?

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#116

Post by skeeter2020 »

raffael_de wrote: post #106
mattlondon wrote: post #57

I think the big thing that people never mention is, where will these evil AIs escape to ? Another huge data center with squillions of GPUs and coolers and all the rest is the only option. It's not like it is going to be in our TV remotes or floating about in the air. They need huge compute, so I think the risk of an escaping AI is basically very close to zero, and if we have a "rogue" AI we can literally pull the plu…

> They need huge compute, so I think the risk of an escaping AI is basically very close to zero, and if we have a "rogue" AI we can literally pull the plug. How about such an AI will not just incentivize key personnel to not pull the plug but to protect it? Such an AI will scheme a coordinated attack at the backbones of our financial system and electric networks. It just needs a threshold number of people on its side…

replace AI with trucks and you've written Maximum Overdrive.

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#117

Post by ceejayoz »

baggy_trough wrote: post #97
ipython wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. From the party of “states rights” that’s a bit hypocritical of them. I mean- they applauded Dodds which basically did the exact opposite of this- forcing states to regulate abortion rather than a uniform federal standard.

Dobbs did not force states to regulate abortion. It allowed them to.

Yes, that's the hypocrisy.

Abortion: "Let the states regulate! States' rights! Small government! (Because we know we'll get our way in a lot of them.)"

AI: "Don't let the states regulate! All hail the Feds! (Because we know we won't get our way if they do.)"

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#118

Post by Recursing »

mattlondon wrote: post #57

I think the big thing that people never mention is, where will these evil AIs escape to ? Another huge data center with squillions of GPUs and coolers and all the rest is the only option. It's not like it is going to be in our TV remotes or floating about in the air. They need huge compute, so I think the risk of an escaping AI is basically very close to zero, and if we have a "rogue" AI we can literally pull the plu…

> They need huge compute

My understanding is that huge compute is necessary to train but not to run the AI (that's why using LLMs is so cheap)

> To me the more real risk is creeping integration and reliance in everyday life until things become "too big to fail" so we can't pull the plug even if we wanted to

I agree with that, see e.g. what happened with attempts to restrict TikTok: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_TikTok_in_the_...

> But I would imagine if it really became a genuine existential threat we'd have to just do it

It's unclear to me that we would be able to. People would just say that it's science fiction, and that China will do it anyway, so we might as well enjoy the AI

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#119

Post by hahaxdxd123 »

kristopolous wrote: post #20

This looks like the exercises organizations write to guide policy and preparation. There's all kinds of wild scenarios: the president getting kidnapped, Canada falling to a belligerent dictator, and famously, a coronavirus pandemic... This looks like one of those Apparently this is exactly what it is https://ai-futures.org/

> Canada falling to a belligerent dictator

Hmm

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#120

Post by tux3 »

api wrote: post #45
tux3 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can perfectly try things and learn without being embodied. The analogy to how humans learn only goes so far, it's myopic to think anything else is impossible. It's already happening. The situation today is any benchmark you come up with has a good chance of being saturated within the year. Benchmarks can be used directly to build series of exercises to learn from. And they do learn. Gradient descend doesn't care…

> it's myopic to think anything else is impossible. It's already happening. Well, hey, I could be wrong. If I am, I just had a weird thought. Maybe that's our Fermi paradox answer. If it's possible to reason ex nihilo to truth and reality, then reality and the universe are beyond a point superfluous. Maybe what happens out there is that intelligences go "foom," become superintelligences, and then no longer need to ex…

A simpler reason why it fails: You always need more energy. Every sort of development seems to correlate with energy use. You don't explore for the sake of learning something about another floating rock in space, you explore because that's where more resources are.
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