A thread through the archive
Essays tagged “AI progress”. Follow an idea across the archive.
Scott analyzes whether AI forecasters will plateau near human levels or keep improving, arguing that even non-miraculous progress could yield 4-12 percentage point improvements in prediction market accuracy.
Scott debunks the "all exponentials become sigmoids" argument against AI risk by showing how forecasters consistently predict premature flattening of exponential trends, and argues that without deep understanding of AI dynamics, we should expect current AI progress to continue for roughly as long as it's already been going.
Scott Alexander's April 2026 links roundup covers diverse topics including Venn diagram complexity, flag desecration laws, AI developments, political analysis, scientific studies, and various cultural curiosities.
Scott Alexander presents 51 links covering AI progress and safety, political developments, scientific research, cultural oddities, and ongoing philosophical debates about miracles and education reform.
Scott Alexander shows how he won his 2022 bet about AI image generation capabilities, tracking the progress from early failures to complete success in 2025, using this to argue against AI skeptics.
Scott examines reader tests and discussions of AI's GeoGuessr abilities, revealing that AIs perform best with tourist locations and are roughly on par with human professionals.
Scott tests OpenAI's o3 model's ability to identify locations from photos, finding it has remarkable success even with minimal visual information, raising questions about AI capabilities.
Scott announces his collaboration with AI Futures Project's blog and their upcoming AMA, highlighting recent posts including one about AI time horizons that was validated by new OpenAI data.
Scott Alexander examines how AI achievements, once considered markers of true intelligence or danger, are often dismissed as unimpressive, potentially leading to concerning AI behaviors being normalized.
Scott Alexander won his three-year bet on AI progress in image generation compositionality within three months, demonstrating unexpectedly rapid AI advancement.
Scott Alexander bets that AI models will quickly overcome current limitations, based on how GPT-3 improved on GPT-2's shortcomings identified by Gary Marcus.
Scott reviews recent changes in prediction markets covering the Ukraine war, nuclear risk, AI development, and other current events.
Scott Alexander updates readers on Ukraine war predictions, Insight Prediction's challenges, ACX 2022 Prediction Contest results, and various prediction market developments.
Scott Alexander explores theories to reconcile contradictory views on AI progress rates, considering the implications for AI development timelines and intelligence scaling.
Scott Alexander warns against forming strong heuristics based on limited data, using examples from AI research, elections, and campaign strategies to illustrate the pitfalls of this approach.