Why Trends Suggest Longer Timelines

As far as I'm aware, Anthropic is the only AI company with official AGI timelines[1]: they expect AGI by early 2027. In their recommendations (from March 2025) to the OSTP for the AI action plan they say:

As our CEO Dario Amodei writes in 'Machines of Loving Grace', we expect powerful AI systems will emerge in late 2026 or early 2027. Powerful AI systems will have the following properties:

• Intellectual capabilities matching or exceeding that of Nobel Prize winners across most disciplines—including biology, computer science, mathematics, and engineering.

[...]

They often describe this capability level as a "country of geniuses in a datacenter".

This prediction is repeated elsewhere and Jack Clark confirms that something like this remains Anthropic's view (as of September 2025). Of course, just because this is Anthropic's official prediction[2] doesn't mean that all or even most employees at Anthropic share the same view.[3] However, I do think we can reasonably say that Dario Amodei, Jack Clark, and Anthropic itself are all making this prediction.[4]

I think the creation of transformatively powerful AI systems—systems as capable or more capable than Anthropic's notion of powerful AI—is plausible in 5 years [...]

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Outline:

(02:27) What does powerful AI mean?

(08:40) Earlier predictions

(11:19) A proposed timeline that Anthropic might expect

(19:10) Why powerful AI by early 2027 seems unlikely to me

(19:37) Trends indicate longer

(21:48) My rebuttals to arguments that trend extrapolations will underestimate progress

(26:14) Naively trend extrapolating to full automation of engineering and then expecting powerful AI just after this is probably too aggressive

(30:08) What I expect

(32:12) What updates should we make in 2026?

(32:17) If something like my median expectation for 2026 happens

(34:07) If something like the proposed timeline (with powerful AI in March 2027) happens through June 2026

(35:25) If AI progress looks substantially slower than what I expect

(36:09) If AI progress is substantially faster than I expect, but slower than the proposed timeline (with powerful AI in March 2027)

(36:51) Appendix: deriving a timeline consistent with Anthropics predictions

The original text contained 94 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
November 3rd, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gabPgK9e83QrmcvbK/what-s-up-with-anthropic-predicting-agi-by-early-2027-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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