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cover of episode “AI 2027: What Superintelligence Looks Like” by Daniel Kokotajlo, Thomas Larsen, elifland, Scott Alexander, Jonas V, romeo

“AI 2027: What Superintelligence Looks Like” by Daniel Kokotajlo, Thomas Larsen, elifland, Scott Alexander, Jonas V, romeo

2025/4/3
logo of podcast LessWrong (30+ Karma)

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In 2021 I wrote what became my most popular blog post: What 2026 Looks Like. I intended to keep writing predictions all the way to AGI and beyond, but chickened out and just published up till 2026. Well, it's finally time. I'm back, and this time I have a team with me: the AI Futures Project. We've written a concrete scenario of what we think the future of AI will look like. We are highly uncertain, of course, but we hope this story will rhyme with reality enough to help us all prepare for what's ahead.

You really should go read it on the website instead of here, it's much better. There's a sliding dashboard that updates the stats as you scroll through the scenario!

But I've nevertheless copied the first half of the story below. I look forward to reading your comments. Mid 2025: Stumbling Agents

The [...]


Outline:

(01:35) Mid 2025: Stumbling Agents

(03:13) Late 2025: The World's Most Expensive AI

(08:34) Early 2026: Coding Automation

(10:49) Mid 2026: China Wakes Up

(13:48) Late 2026: AI Takes Some Jobs

(15:35) January 2027: Agent-2 Never Finishes Learning

(18:20) February 2027: China Steals Agent-2

(21:12) March 2027: Algorithmic Breakthroughs

(23:58) April 2027: Alignment for Agent-3

(27:26) May 2027: National Security

(29:50) June 2027: Self-improving AI

(31:36) July 2027: The Cheap Remote Worker

(34:35) August 2027: The Geopolitics of Superintelligence

(40:43) September 2027: Agent-4, the Superhuman AI Researcher


First published: April 3rd, 2025

Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TpSFoqoG2M5MAAesg/ai-2027-what-superintelligence-looks-like-1)

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO).


Images from the article: ![Web article about AI predictions for 2027, with prediction timelines and icons.

The article shows a section titled ](https://39669.cdn.cke-cs.com/rQvD3VnunXZu34m86e5f/images/674b0af73e184373b34bd30fe13f042e8bff19ff82094366.png))![Pie chart: ](https://res.cloudinary.com/lesswrong-2-0/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/TpSFoqoG2M5MAAesg/hwh3dqajjdjgddtngpyg))![Area graph titled ](https://res.cloudinary.com/lesswrong-2-0/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/7f96afb4bc2e02758f4c5c1e0707ecf8e3602fc313d99cb66b06f09b31aaa4ca/juaec61dqfx17zfkcz6f))![Graph showing research automation speed versus parallel processing capabilities, 2027 projections.](https://res.cloudinary.com/lesswrong-2-0/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/a0e9ce31d88a24acce83ade807c2d6bef78b40c8e35f1894721123574fad28b3/tps8gji0zjyqah6wa7ii))![Business metrics dashboard showing ](https://res.cloudinary.com/lesswrong-2-0/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/c1cdb1ed0cbcb98d53604fdafebc32e181d69048640d5fbb18b7420221ee6e94/riyufq8xe4l8i00xcvkf))![Comparison diagram showing relative sizes of GPT-3, GPT-4, and Agent-0 models.](https://res.cloudinary.com/lesswrong-2-0/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/TpSFoqoG2M5MAAesg/yfwkv0fefci8qnetta0c))![Graph showing LLM inference price declines from 2021-2025, by Epoch AI.](https://res.cloudinary.com/lesswrong-2-0/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/09dffac3b6b511531ad2671a3677253bd3bd7621d7822c9511ed23f04985ba5b/wszuev2g1td9pwvgeudb)) Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts), or another podcast app.