Under these conditions, increasing investment to speed up LM agents today is likely to slow down LM agents in the future, picking low-hanging fruit that would instead have been picked later when investment increased. If I had to guess, I’d say that accelerating AI progress by 1 day today by improving LM agents would give us back 0.5 days later.
Probably worth noting that the more time and investment people put into LM agents now, the better we will be a constructing connected and powerful LM agents in the future. Meaning that you reduce the “agency overhang”, but you increase our ability to make use of that agency once we do get more powerful systems. If you invest in it less now, it’ll take more time to make it work well in the future (though by that point you also have more powerful systems that get you to understand what works with LM agents much faster).
Probably worth noting that the more time and investment people put into LM agents now, the better we will be a constructing connected and powerful LM agents in the future. Meaning that you reduce the “agency overhang”, but you increase our ability to make use of that agency once we do get more powerful systems. If you invest in it less now, it’ll take more time to make it work well in the future (though by that point you also have more powerful systems that get you to understand what works with LM agents much faster).