What Just Changed

Three Words

In September the man whose company makes the chips nearly every AI runs on posted three words — a congratulation to a customer, not a product launch. Fourteen definitions of AGI say the term is a fight, not a finding, so this film puts the word down and picks up the numbers: one training run on more than a hundred thousand chips, research programmes putting in about three days of effort for every human day, and the part that is hard to unhear — they are using it to build the next one.

1. 00:00Three words
2. 00:07The man who makes the chips
3. 00:29The machines that build machines
4. 00:44What the words actually mean
5. 01:02A hundred thousand chips, one training run
6. 01:30They're using it to build the next one
7. 01:44The deciding is inside the loop
8. 02:10The one thing that isn't a guess
9. 02:24The house position
10. 02:34Where the pace lands next
11. 02:53Three words: artificial general intelligence

• 'AGI has arrived' was a chip-seller's congratulation; the 100,000 chips are the lab's own countSELF-REPORTED
• OpenAI says its research agents now put in 3.1 days of effort per human daySELF-REPORTED

Ten Thousand Researchers on a Tuesday Afternoon

Stir a cup of coffee and watch the milk. Nobody can predict that — provably. This month a swarm of about ten thousand AI programmes worked for roughly four days on the hardest version of the 170-year-old equations anyone had handed them, and found an answer that holds. Be precise about what they solved, because the headlines were not: the forced case, not the free-flowing one the million-dollar prize is written for. The team said so themselves and declined the prize. Then why it still changes everything: a test that cost about $500,000 of compute to pass last year costs about $20 today.

1. 00:00Ten thousand researchers on a Tuesday afternoon
2. 00:07Stir a cup of coffee
3. 00:22The million-dollar prize
4. 00:35The swarm
5. 00:49Be precise about what they solved
6. 01:01They declined the prize
7. 01:15Science used to scale with scientists
8. 01:32$500,000 → $20
9. 01:48Nine billion letters of DNA
10. 02:13The bottleneck came off
11. 02:32Ask it
12. 02:38The result: forced case, prize declined

• AI did not solve Navier–Stokes. It solved the forced case, and declined the prize.CORRECTION
• A benchmark that cost about $500,000 to pass now costs about $20SELF-REPORTED

Airline Miles for Thinking

In China this year a bank started handing out artificial intelligence as a credit-card reward. The phone company sells it like a data plan, 142 models on the menu; South Korea said everyone gets access, as infrastructure. Nobody knew what a kilowatt-hour was either, until it showed up on a bill and the price started falling. Then the turn: six years of progress, examined, say better material beat better model design by about three to one — so the expensive part is no longer the machine. It is what you put in it, and the only material nobody else has is yours.

1. 00:00Airline miles for thinking
2. 00:07A bank gives away AI
3. 00:34What a token actually is
4. 00:47Why this price falls differently
5. 00:59Cut off from the chips
6. 01:15The constraint is why they found it
7. 01:35Better material beat better models
8. 01:54The only material nobody else has
9. 02:05Ground truth is the scarce thing
10. 02:15Take the free tokens
11. 02:29The price: thinking got too cheap to meter

• Better data beat better model design about three to one — in a blog post, not a studySELF-REPORTED
• Chinese banks are giving away AI tokens as credit-card rewardsVERIFIED
• China Telecom sells access to 142 AI models like a data planVERIFIED
• South Korea will give every citizen a free AI agentVERIFIED

A Car That Works for You While You Sleep

A week after driverless taxis started carrying people in Austin, a form went up — not a waiting list to ride one, a form to buy them and put them to work. There is no price on it yet, and a form is not a product; but the form is the news. Underneath it sits a bigger number: about 830 million people on Earth are over sixty-five today, heading toward 1.7 billion by mid-century, with fewer children born almost everywhere. Two ways out of that arrived at the same time — machines that do the work we are running out of people to do, and medicine that keeps people well enough to keep contributing.

1. 00:00A car that works for you while you sleep
2. 00:07A form went up
3. 00:31No price yet. Only the form.
4. 00:51The part underneath it
5. 00:54830 million, going to 1.7 billion
6. 01:17Two ways out, arriving at once
7. 01:37Longevity as economic policy
8. 01:48The taxi is here. The robot isn't.
9. 02:00A hundred and fifty thousand a day
10. 02:20The shift: the machine works the night shift

• Tesla opened a form to buy driverless taxi fleets. There is no price on it.VERIFIED
• 833 million people are over 65 today; about 1.7 billion by 2054CORRECTION

The Pie Gets Enormous

An AI company published a forecast of its own economy. Its extreme case: 32.4% growth a year and 17.9% of knowledge workers out of work. The film sets that beside what is measured today, the Atlanta Fed's 4.7% print and 639,000 new kinds of role, and stamps every claim with what kind of knowledge it is.

1. 00:00Every claim says what kind of knowledge it is
2. 00:10A forecast of its own economy
3. 00:20The company's own extreme case
4. 00:32The pie gets enormous
5. 00:44And the slicing stops working
6. 01:04Measured, not forecast
7. 01:23639,000 roles · half a trillion, an estimate
8. 01:47The turkey before Thanksgiving
9. 01:55Catch people in the gap
10. 02:26100,000 employees, pointed at what?
11. 02:41What would you point them at?

Should We Slow Down?

Five days in September when the AI labs argued in public about slowing down: an essay called An Alien Mind, a resignation read 90 million times, an incident on an abandoned wiki and its correction. Every claim stamped, including the one the headlines got wrong.

1. 00:00Every claim says what kind of knowledge it is
2. 00:10Five days in September
3. 00:21Grown, not designed
4. 00:36Read 90 million times
5. 00:49Steering, not stopping
6. 00:56Nudge it, years out
7. 01:17The incident, as Reuters reported it
8. 01:29The correction
9. 01:386 GB, an estimate
10. 01:48H.R. 9917, in committee
11. 02:03Petrov Day
12. 02:17Judgment, not speed