“AIs will greatly change research engineering within AI companies well before AGI” by ryan_greenblatt

In response to my recent post arguing against above trend progress from better RL environments, yet another argument for short(er) AGI timelines was raised to me:

Sure, at the current rate of progress, it would take a while (e.g. 5 years) to reach AIs that can automate research engineering within AI companies while being cheap and fast (superhuman coder). But we'll get large increases in the rate of AI progress well before superhuman coder due to AIs accelerating AI R&D. Probably we'll see big enough accelerations to really cut down on timelines to superhuman coder once AIs can somewhat reliably complete tasks that take top human research engineers 8 hours. After all, such AIs would probably be capable enough to greatly change research engineering in AI companies.

I'm skeptical of this argument: I think that it's unlikely (15%) that we see large speed ups (>2x faster overall [...]

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Outline:

(03:48) AI progress speed ups dont seem large enough

(08:25) Interpolating between now and superhuman coder doesnt indicate large speed ups within 2 years

(12:56) What about speedups from mechanisms other than accelerating engineering?

(14:16) Other reasons to expect very short timelines

(14:33) Implications of a several year period prior to full automation of AI R&D where research engineering is greatly changed

(20:56) Appendix: sanity check of engineering speed up

(22:45) Appendix: How do speed ups to engineering translate to overall AI progress speed ups?

The original text contained 10 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 9th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uRdJio8pnTqHpWa4t/ais-will-greatly-change-research-engineering-within-ai

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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