This is what matters for AI R&D speed and for almost all recursive self-improvement.
Zvi is not quite correct when he is saying
If o3 was as good on most tasks as it is at coding or math, then it would be AGI.
o3 is not that good in coding and math (e.g. it only gets 71.7% on SWE-bench verified), it is not a “narrow AGI” yet. But it is strong enough, it’s a giant step forward.
For example, if one takes Sakana’s “AI scientist”, upgrades it slightly, and uses o3 as a back-end, it is likely that one can generate NeurIPS/ICLR quality papers and as many of those as one wants.
So, another upgrade (or a couple of upgrades) beyond o3, and we will reach that coveted “narrow AGI” stage.
What OpenAI has demonstrated is that it is much easier to achieve “narrow AGI” than “full AGI”. This does suggest a road to ASI without going through anything remotely close to a “full AGI” stage, with missing capabilities to be filled afterwards.
Right. We should probably introduce a new name, something like narrow AGI, to denote a system which is AGI-level in coding and math.
This kind of system will be “AGI” as redefined by Tom Davidson in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Nsmabb9fhpLuLdtLE/takeoff-speeds-presentation-at-anthropic:
This is what matters for AI R&D speed and for almost all recursive self-improvement.
Zvi is not quite correct when he is saying
o3 is not that good in coding and math (e.g. it only gets 71.7% on SWE-bench verified), it is not a “narrow AGI” yet. But it is strong enough, it’s a giant step forward.
For example, if one takes Sakana’s “AI scientist”, upgrades it slightly, and uses o3 as a back-end, it is likely that one can generate NeurIPS/ICLR quality papers and as many of those as one wants.
So, another upgrade (or a couple of upgrades) beyond o3, and we will reach that coveted “narrow AGI” stage.
What OpenAI has demonstrated is that it is much easier to achieve “narrow AGI” than “full AGI”. This does suggest a road to ASI without going through anything remotely close to a “full AGI” stage, with missing capabilities to be filled afterwards.