Azeem Azhar

And so it was just a small incremental amount.

And then the AI folks show up and they say, well, AI can massively increase the amount of knowledge being produced and we can get an exponential takeoff.

So the mistake I made, long and short of it, was I said, but kind of Roma doesn't,

accommodate for that.

Nathan, my researcher, who's actually bothering to read the paper in detail, says, no, that's not right.

He does.

He's got his coefficient or variable called phi, I think it is.

If phi is one or above, you get exponential takeoff, but in general, phi has been below one.

That's where I got caught out.

1990, endogenous technological change was the paper.

I had just read my

summary and of course not the detail and thank god i had nathan there to uh to set me right but then my question to you is looking at that do you and what you see do you see a path where we get over the burden of knowledge and we do get to see that exponential

So look, but let's do this.

Let's stay on this future track just for a second and I'll bring us back to ground because people are living lives in 2026 and we need to help throw some light on that.

So it does feel to me that this is something that is on a knife-edge balance, which is that if you are able to automate research end-to-end, and we're starting to see a number of companies out there funded by private capital trying to do this, you could, in principle, get to a point where

discoveries happen faster and faster.

One of my favorite examples is, you know, why didn't your parents use LED light bulbs when you were a kid?

LED light bulbs are better.

They use less energy.

They're more controllable.