Since the scaling experiment is not yet done, it remains possible that long-horizon agency is just a matter of scale even with current architectures, no additional research necessary. In which case additional research helps save on compute and shape the AIs, but doesn’t influence ability to reach the changeover point, when the LLMs take the baton and go on doing any further research on their own.
Distributed training might be one key milestone that’s not yet commoditized, making individual datacenters with outrageous local energy requirements unnecessary. And of course there’s the issue of access to large quantities of hardware.
Since the scaling experiment is not yet done, it remains possible that long-horizon agency is just a matter of scale even with current architectures, no additional research necessary. In which case additional research helps save on compute and shape the AIs, but doesn’t influence ability to reach the changeover point, when the LLMs take the baton and go on doing any further research on their own.
Distributed training might be one key milestone that’s not yet commoditized, making individual datacenters with outrageous local energy requirements unnecessary. And of course there’s the issue of access to large quantities of hardware.