“Six milestones for AI automation” by Ajeya

Note: This post was crossposted from Planned Obsolescence by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post. Subtitle: What can AI do on its own, and when? The closer you think you are to your “powerful AI” milestone of choice, the more important it becomes to define it precisely. If your timelines are in the few-year range, changing the particular definition of powerful AI can easily double or triple your median forecast. Take my definition of “full automation of AI R&D” from my predictions post earlier this year: [F]or whichever AI company is in the lead [at the relevant point in time], if you fired all its members of technical staff, its rate of technical progress on relevant benchmarks would be slowed down by less than 25% (this is a pretty arbitrary threshold, you can make the milestone more or less extreme by choosing a smaller or bigger number). There's a lot that could be made more precise about this definition, but let's zoom in on that arbitrary quantitative threshold. In every major sector of economic activity, the productivity hit you take from removing humans is and [...] --- First published: April 3rd, 2026 Source: --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts , or another podcast app.