SITUATIONAL AWARENESS: The Decade Ahead --- Introduction

Notes

Self-published essay series by a former OpenAI employee; primary testimony about SF/AI-lab consensus and author's own forecasts. Slightly above blog prior (0.35) because author has direct insider access to frontier lab thinking, but claims are forecasts/opinion rather than measured.

Evidence from this source (5)

• CDAschenbrenner projects that AI-driven industrial mobilization will grow US elec… support
  weight

  0.70

  method: modeled_projection · locator: Introduction, opening paragraph

  “By the end of the decade, American electricity production will have grown tens of percent”

• CDAschenbrenner forecasts that the US national security state will become directl… support
  weight

  0.85

  method: expert_estimate · locator: Table of Contents, Section IV summary

  “The USG will wake from its slumber, and by 27/28 we'll get some form of government AGI project. No startup can handle superintelligence.”

• CDAschenbrenner forecasts that AGI by 2027 is strikingly plausible, projecting an… support
  weight

  0.90

  method: expert_estimate · locator: Table of Contents, Section I summary

  “AGI by 2027 is strikingly plausible. GPT-2 to GPT-4 took us from ~preschooler to ~smart high-schooler abilities in 4 years.”

• CDAschenbrenner forecasts that hundreds of millions of AGIs could automate AI res… support
  weight

  0.90

  method: expert_estimate · locator: Table of Contents, Section II summary

  “Hundreds of millions of AGIs could automate AI research, compressing a decade of algorithmic progress (5+ OOMs) into ≤1 year.”

• CDAschenbrenner reports that frontier-AI boardroom compute-cluster plans have esc… support
  weight

  0.75

  method: primary_testimony · locator: Introduction, opening paragraphs

  “the talk of the town has shifted from $10 billion compute clusters to $100 billion clusters to trillion-dollar clusters. Every six months another zero is added to the boardroom plans.”