There’s a kind of AI-skeptic take that boils down to “AI is not that capable.”

My AI-skeptic take is the exact opposite. AI is incredibly, astoundingly capable. And yet I notice that it has changed the world astoundingly less than I would have expected of such capabilities 10 years ago.

By any reasonable definition a decade ago (heck, 5 years ago!), AGI is already here, arguably even ASI too! AI is already better than humans at all sorts of tasks! And yet I notice I am surprised by how much less disruption there has been than I would expect.

This doesn’t mean there won’t be any disruption in the future, or that it won’t or can’t make big changes, or that it’s all a nothing-burger. Just that, if you rewind the clock to 2016 and tell me, that in 2026 we will have blown way the hell past the Turing test and hit all these other incredible benchmarks, but also that most white collar labor hasn’t been automated away, I wouldn’t have believed you.