Toby Ord

Regarding AGI, it's already getting a bit misty.

In February there was a piece in Nature arguing that the current level of frontier AI should count as AGI.

I'd set the bar a bit higher than that, but I agree it is already debatable whether we're in the cloud.

For my purposes, I think the key threshold is when the system is capable enough that there are dramatic changes to the world.

Civilizational changes.

For example, the point where AI could take over from humanity were it misaligned, or it has made 50% of people permanently unemployable, or has doubled the global rate of technological progress.

Something like that.

The reason I picked this point is that I think it is the one that matters most for decision-relevant planning of our strategies and careers.

For many purposes we'd want our plans to pay off before we reach that point, and plans that reach fruition afterwards are likely to be significantly disrupted.

I'll refer to this as transformative AI and will make sure to show what rubric other people are using when they give their own timeline numbers.

Heading Short versus long timelines

Discussions about timelines are usually framed as a debate between short timelines versus long timelines.

One of the most prominent supporters of very short timelines is Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic.

In January 2025 he said,

End quote.

A month later, he clarified.

Quote.

possibly by 2026 or 2027, and almost certainly no later than 2030, the capabilities of AI systems will be best thought of as akin to an entirely new state populated by highly intelligent people appearing on the global stage.

A country of geniuses in a data center, with the profound economic, societal, and security implications that would bring.

End quote.