Happy May the 4th from Convergence Analysis! Cross-posted on the EA Forum.

As part of Convergence Analysis's scenario research, we’ve been looking into how AI organisations, experts, and forecasters make predictions about the future of AI. In February 2023, the AI research institute Epoch published a report in which its authors use neural scaling laws to make quantitative predictions about when AI will reach human-level performance and become transformative. The report has a corresponding blog post, an interactive model, and a Python notebook.

We found this approach really interesting, but also hard to understand intuitively. While trying to follow how the authors derive a forecast from their assumptions, we wrote a breakdown that may be useful to others thinking about AI timelines and forecasting.

In what follows, we set out our interpretation of Epoch's ‘Direct Approach’ to forecasting the arrival of transformative AI (TAI). We’re eager to [...]

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Outline:

(01:54) This is where the fun begins (the assumptions)

(05:12) The Imitation Wars

(05:41) Version I: The Phantom Marble

(06:47) Version II: Attack of the Pawns

(09:58) Version III: Revenge of the LLM

(15:01) Imitation Wars + scaling laws = compute requirements

(17:02) The Forecast Awakens

(21:11) It's over, Anakin – I have the results

(21:55) How sensitive is Epoch's model to disturbances in the Force?

(26:17) These aren’t the scaling laws you’re looking for

(32:56) Is this The Way? (Our reflections)

(35:28) The sacred texts!

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.