“Q2.5 2026 Timelines Update: Uplift and Revenue” by brendanhalstead, Daniel Kokotajlo, elifland

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Recorded16 Aug 2026

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Tl;dr: Our timelines haven’t changed much (they got slightly shorter) but our modeling and evidence base have noticeably improved, so we feel somewhat more confident. Summary We intend to regularly update our AI timelines forecasts as new evidence comes in and new analyses are done. Today's “Q2” update was delayed by the crunch to publish AI 2040: Plan A, our domestic regulation blog post, and the time needed to implement and document changes to our model. The original AI Futures Model predicted when Automated Coder (AC), an AI for which the leading AI company would rather fire its human software engineers than forego AI usage for coding, would happen using METR's measurements of coding time horizon. (More precisely, time horizon anchors are used to set the effective compute required for AC.) While serviceable, this method has huge weaknesses, including (a) it's unclear what time horizon corresponds to AC (it's even unclear whether any finite value would) (b) people strongly disagree about the extent to which we should expect the time horizon trend to be superexponential as a function of effective compute, in a way that can lead to vastly different predictions. So we’ve been on the lookout for other [...] ---Outline:(00:26) Summary(04:03) A 3-parameter uplift model for predicting when Automated Coder will arrive(07:57) Adding uplift and revenue anchors to the AI Futures Model(09:06) Uplift(10:45) Revenue(12:32) Update to the grading of AI 2027's predictions(12:38) Comparing the AI 2027 pace of progress to reality(14:43) Grading other predictions(16:37) Updated forecasts(16:41) Daniel(19:48) Eli(21:54) en-US-AvaMultilingualNeural__ Line graph titled "AI Futures Model: Timelines Forecast" showing probability density curves. Brendan(25:04) en-US-AvaMultilingualNeural__ Line graph titled "AI Futures Model: Timelines Forecast" showing probability density curves.(25:16) Appendix(25:19) How our AGI forecasts have changed since 2021(26:10) Explicitly simulating the training run of the leading AI model(27:06) Research taste parameter adjustments(27:51) Clarification regarding what we're forecasting(28:43) Various minor code changes The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 16th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZPSsmRH5oMwLPXys4/q2-5-2026-timelines-update-uplift-and-revenue --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

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