“Broad Timelines” by Toby_Ord

March 21

30 mins

Episode Description

No-one knows when AI will begin having transformative impacts upon the world. People aren’t sure and shouldn’t be sure: there just isn’t enough evidence to pin it down.

But we don’t need to wait for certainty. I want to explore what happens if we take our uncertainty seriously — if we act with epistemic humility. What does wise planning look like in a world of deeply uncertain AI timelines?

I’ll conclude that taking the uncertainty seriously has real implications for how one can contribute to making this AI transition go well. And it has even more implications for how we act together — for our portfolio of work aimed towards this end.

AI Timelines

By AI timelines, I refer to how long it will be before AI has truly transformative effects on the world. People often think about this using terms such as artificial general intelligence (AGI), human level AI, transformative AI, or superintelligence. Each term is used differently by different people, making it challenging to compare their stated timelines. Indeed even an individual's own definition of their favoured term will be somewhat vague, such that even after their threshold has been crossed, they might have [...]

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Outline:

(00:58) AI Timelines

(04:38) Short vs Long Timelines

(07:05) Broad Timelines

(17:55) Implications

(19:46) Hedging

(20:58) A Different World

(24:00) Longterm Actions

(28:33) Conclusions

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First published:
March 19th, 2026