What I'm Doing Now

Here I keep an up-to-date list of what I’m focusing on and working on, inspired by Derek Sivers’ Now movement.

Updated on January 24th, 2024, from my home office in Humboldt County, CA.

Thinking about AGI timelines

I was already under the impression that AGI was coming sooner rather than later, but with the release of o3 and r1, along with the announcement of the Stargate project, it feels like it might arrive sooner than I initially expected. Probably not this year, but it could be here by the end of next year or early 2027. That’s a pretty daunting possibility because we don’t know what’s going to happen after that.

Maybe AGI leads to unprecedented levels of scientific breakthrough and ushers in a new golden age for humanity, or maybe it’s used to create a dystopia where a small ruling class is in charge forever. And that’s only if we can control it. What if it “breaks out” and recursively improves itself? What happens when it’s smarter than all of humanity combined? Do we really think we can control something like that? What hubris! If AGI bootstraps itself to ASI then it doesn’t matter if the ASI is benevolent or malevolent—humans will no longer have control and will never get it back.

I want to make it clear that I don’t claim to have some sort of crystal ball giving me magical insights about the future. I don’t know how things are going to play out. What I’m saying is that AGI is almost certainly going to be the most pivotal moment in human history and our entire future depends on what happens shortly after its inception. If it’s aligned with human values (the goods ones at least), then the future will likely be bright. If it’s not, then our future may be very bleak. If things go really wrong, we may not have a future at all.

The past few weeks have made me reevaluate my entire life. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do, but I do know that I’m going to do everything in my power to help things go right for humanity. Life is precious. We may be the only highly-intelligent life in the universe, and I refuse to let the light of that consciousness get snuffed out by arms race dynamics between a few entities charging ahead recklessly without at least trying to put up a fight. I’m going to spend the next few weeks thinking deeply about this and try to figure out what I can do as an individual to help us create a bright future for everyone. I will share my thoughts in a formal post once I figure out a plan of action.