"Forecasting the Future: Insights from Leopold Aschenbrenner’s 'Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead'”

Last weekend, my family and I took a day trip to San Diego, and while there, we visited the Comic-Con Museum. The exhibits highlighted concepts from science fiction, from Jules Verne to Back to the Future, that have evolved into real-world technologies. This visit was in parallel with me reading "Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead" by Leopold Aschenbrenner. This paper, however, is not science fiction; it's likely an informed forecast. While I am no expert in LLMs and AI, I am following along, and if you haven’t read it or plan to, the 165 pages are worth your time.

I Recommend You Read it in Full

It’s not lost on me that I read about the potential of Super Intelligence via a hard copy I had printed at the UPS store. The reason is because the depth of examples and references supporting the points, and counterpoints, are not effectively conveyed via the numerous podcast and Chat-GPT summaries. So, I encourage you to check it out in its entirety.

If you are interested in any of the following, you should consider giving it a read…

1. Future of the Knowledge Worker: If you’re keen on understanding how emerging technologies will shape your professional future.

???- "From chatbot to agent-coworker... by 2027, rather than a chatbot, you’re going to have something that looks more like an agent, like a coworker." This will not require highly advanced new models; simply “unhobbling” a model like GPT-4 can achieve this.

2. Investing: Retail investors looking to make informed decisions will find this research invaluable. Understanding the trajectory of technological advancements can help in identifying lucrative sectors.

???- "If you keep being surprised by AI capabilities, just start counting the OOMs."

3. Politics: For those who vote in the U.S., the paper discusses the implications of AI on governance, policy-making, and international relations, regulation, and perhaps more importantly, deregulation.

???- "Before the decade is out, many trillions of dollars of compute clusters will have been built. The only question is whether they will be built in America."

4. Energy: The power infrastructure capabilities needed along with the need for faster action to implement them.

???- "Probably the single biggest constraint on the supply-side will be power…”

5. Manufacturing: The future of manufacturing is bright with advancements in automation and AI. This paper delves into how these technologies will enhance productivity, reduce costs, and drive innovation.

???- “Robots are an ML algorithms problem…hundreds of millions of AGIs will make amazing AI researchers…to figure out ML to make amazing robots.”

6. Cryptocurrency: This paper sheds light on the potential impacts of AI on cryptocurrency as a payment method between systems.

Final Thoughts

If you are curious about the technological future and the impact on the facets above, Aschenbrenner's work offers an insightful look into what likely lies ahead. And who knows, you might even find joy in the tactile experience of reading a printed page.

#AI #FutureOfWork #SuperIntelligence #LLMs #Knowledgeworker