A few thoughts on what an exponentially increasing time horizon means for AI R&D automation:
I think a 1-year 50%-time-horizon is very likely not enough to automate AI research, but I also think that AI research is 50% likely to be automated by the end of 2028.
The reason I think AI research might be automated by EOY 2028 is because I think the time horizon at that time will be much higher than 1 year (the result of a naive extrapolation from current rates), as the time horizon will increase faster and faster over time. A few reasons:
Aug 9 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Has AI progress slowed down? I’ll write some personal takes and predictions in this thread.
The main metric I look at is METR’s time horizon, which measures the length of tasks agents can perform. It has been doubling for more than 6 years now, and might have sped up recently.
By measuring the length of tasks AI agents can complete, we can get a continuous metric of AI capabilities.
Since 2019, the time horizon has been doubling every 7 months. But since 2024, it’s been doubling every 4 months. What if we irresponsibly extrapolated these to 2030?
