How long until AI automates all cognitive labor?

Post by ddp26 » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

dwohnitmok wrote: post #22

The current HN submission title ("AGI timelines shift with whichever lab is dominant") is very bad. It is neither the title of the article nor is it the thrust of the content. The title of the article is "How long until AI automates all cognitive labor?" The main point of the article is summarized by its intro: "Recently, though, I noticed that many great researchers have now published two or more precise forecasts,…

Post by ddp26 » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:59 PM UTC

bananaflag wrote: post #3

hidelooktropic wrote: post #2

> The overlapping AGI definition I use here is "Most purely cognitive labor is automatable at better quality, speed, and cost than humans". For some of these researchers, saying they use this definitions is a bit of a stretch, but I included everyone who I judged as close enough to be informative. Seems "AGI" is on the same level as "art" or "love" in that everyone knows what we're talking about but no one can nail d…

I have no idea why this "AGI is not even well defined" meme gained so much traction recently. AGI is something that can do everything better than humans. Write a novel, seduce someone, prove a theorem, fix a pipe, whatever. And it's clear right now we don't have it.

Post by yCombLinks » Thu, May 28, 2026, 3:00 PM UTC

ddp26 wrote: post #30

yCombLinks wrote: post #16

> The overlapping AGI definition I use here is "Most purely cognitive labor is automatable at better quality, speed, and cost than humans". That's a poor definition. Nowhere have I seen cheapness as being a requirement to count as AGI. If we have something that can do everything people can do and more, but it costs a lot means it's not AGI?

Author here, I drew on this from AI 2027. Yes, a very-expensive AGI, e.g. $1 million / day to simulate a smart human, would be a huge deal. But it would have meaningfully different effects than a cheap one. Here's one definition AI 2027 used [1]: "Superhuman coder (SC): An AI system for which the company could run with 5% of their compute budget 30x as many agents as they have human research engineers..." [1] https:/…

Post by blovescoffee » Thu, May 28, 2026, 3:01 PM UTC

3raskja wrote: post #13

Amodei still predicts 2028, the same year when we'll have full self driving and Mars settlements. So far all he has is this little code stealing application that could be replaced by git clone and sed for stripping the license. The times before the Internet when Scientology people had to go into the streets to recruit people were nice. I wish we could put him and his ilk on some Claudology remote island, cut all Inte…

Post by amanaplanacanal » Thu, May 28, 2026, 3:03 PM UTC

hidelooktropic wrote: post #7

bananaflag wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why this "AGI is not even well defined" meme gained so much traction recently. AGI is something that can do everything better than humans. Write a novel, seduce someone, prove a theorem, fix a pipe, whatever. And it's clear right now we don't have it.

You make a good point that not having it is easy to spot. But what precisely would flip the switch? Seducing someone for example, how often would that have to work? On all people? Maybe that was just thrown out as an example but it points to how subjective these goal posts are.