Foom starts when AI can build better AI than humans
Eliezer YudkowskyEliezer Yudkowsky — Why AI will kill us, aligning LLMs, nature of intelligence, SciFi, & rationalityat 40:40
From the conversation
And it’s not a matter of just optimizing some for loops or something, they’ve got to train another billion dollar run to scale up. So that kind of recursive self intelligence idea is less likely. How do you respond? At some point they get smart enough that they can roll their own AI systems and are better at it than humans. And that is the point at which you definitely start to see foom. Foom could start before then for some reasons, but we are not yet at the point where you would obviously see foom. Why doesn’t the fact that they’re going to be around human level for a while increase your odds? Or does it increase your odds of human survival? Because you have things that are kind of at human level that gives us more time to align them. Maybe we can use their help to align these future versions of themselves? Having AI do your AI alignment homework for you is like the nightmare application for alignment. Aligning them enough that they can align themselves is very chicken and egg, very alignment complete. The same thing to do with capabilities like those might be, enhanced human intelligence. Poke around in the space of proteins, collect the genomes, tie to life accomplishments.…
Summary
Recursive self-improvement and hard takeoff become inevitable once AI systems are smart enough to design better AI than humans can. That is the threshold where foom definitively begins - though it may start earlier for other reasons.
Watch the clip on YouTubeStarts at 40:40