“Full automation of AI R&D probably yields a large speed up even without a software-only singularity” by ryan_greenblatt

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Recorded27 May 2026

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This is a somewhat technical note. By "software-only singularity", I mean that, after full automation of AI R&D, progress gets faster and faster due to smarter AIs driving increasingly fast rates of improvement in algorithms (overcoming diminishing returns), and that this lasts long enough to yield a large amount of progress (e.g. at least 4 years of progress in 1 year). The equivalent statement in jargon is: r is significantly greater than 1 (implying progress is getting faster and faster) and this remains the case for long enough to get large amounts of progress. For context, see How quick and big would a software intelligence explosion be? Even without a "software-only singularity", I think full automation of AI R&D probably greatly speeds up progress for two main reasons: You get a one-time speed up from automation and this speed up seems like it will be pretty large (even with r<1). See How quick and big would a software intelligence explosion be? for discussion and see the AI Futures Model for an end-to-end model that naturally incorporates this effect. Quantitatively, with my median parameters but r=0.7, the model from How quick and big would a software… [...] The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: May 27th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jfwhvd43sbpkGTLyn/full-automation-of-ai-r-and-d-probably-yields-a-large-speed --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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