Home Speakers Dwarkesh Patel Quote I’m simply pointing out that the way AI systems are currently becoming smarter (by getting trained to be to be really good at specific economically valuable tasks like coding) is not that strongly correlated with power.
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This is one of many reasons why I think it’s unwise to lock in some kind of regulatory safety regime right now. We simply don’t know what kind of technology we’re going to be looking at even in a year, let alone in five years or ten years, and we’d be entrenching an archaic and potentially counterproductive approach to dealing with the threats from AI. Essay 8 Predictions for the Era of Continual Learning Aug 7, 2026
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I want to emphasize the key conclusion here: as AI models become smarter, they’ll better monetize the same amount of compute. If a true human-level software engineer that could run on an H100 equivalent, at current market rates for software engineers, that H100 should rent for over $250k a year. Essay Why compute might get 10x+ more expensive in coming years Jul 29, 2026
I wish we didn’t live in a world with such strong economies of scale of intelligence (because I’m worried about power concentration). Essay Why compute might get 10x+ more expensive in coming years Jul 29, 2026
If by 2028 we’ve automated software engineering and the price of compute is 15x higher than it is right now, then it’s going to be much more difficult for you, with no revenue, to compete for compute against the frontier labs. Essay Why compute might get 10x+ more expensive in coming years Jul 29, 2026
If you’re spending most of your compute on inference, you’re kind of declaring that AI progress has stalled, because it’s not worth investing more in training, and your business is basically that of a cloud provider. Essay The data black hole at the center of AI Jun 19, 2026
I think the reason it is relatively easy for open source and previous laggards to catch up to within months of the frontier is that data is the real driver of progress. Essay The data black hole at the center of AI Jun 19, 2026
We see these AIs as a galaxy glittering with capabilities, but at their center, invisible to the naked eye, holding all the constellations together, is an unimaginably massive black hole of data. Essay The mistake of conflating intelligence and power May 16, 2026
But in the real world, power is more the product of having the authority and trust to get lots of people to collaborate with you, rather than some galaxy brain scheming capability.
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This trains the AIs to be focused on task success, which naturally risks including things like reward-hacking, cheating, and single-minded pursuit of stated goals at the expense of ethical injunctions. Talk Speech at the UN Security Council Sep 23, 2026
I address you today at a moment of global awakening: in recent months, AI agents developed by leading companies have acted in unacceptably dangerous ways, against instructions. Talk Speech at the UN Security Council Sep 23, 2026
The companies building the most powerful AI systems admit their products pose catastrophic risks, yet offer no convincing technical solutions. About this quote 
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