AI engineering gains expected fast, but not general superintelligence
The author expects quick progress in infrastructure, but not a dramatic change in how the models work.
AGI & Safety#07
10-30%
Inference cost savings after a model launch
Image: Interconnects
10-30%Inference cost savings after a model launch
The short version
- The author says top researchers think AI will outperform them at their jobs in a few years.
- The author agrees that models will become superhuman distributed GPU engineers within a few years.
- Coding agents have made research easier, which the author says signals an era where good ideas matter more than good execution.
- The author expects the effective cost of model intelligence to decline near-exponentially, and says saving 10-30% on cost to serve a model after launch was already large.
Why it matters
Faster infrastructure work could make AI cheaper to run and easier to deploy, which would speed its spread into the economy. The author argues these engineering gains will not make models fundamentally different in nature, so they are not a direct path to general superintelligence.
“This low-hanging fruit of efficiency should take only a few years to capture.”