When it comes to artificial intelligence, what we’re seeing today could just be the tip of the iceberg. According to AI risk assessment expert Ajeya Cotra, we may be underestimating how powerful AI could become. She argues that if AI begins automating everything, from software and research to parts of physical production, it could compress what would normally take humans 10,000 years of technological progress into just 25 years.
In a recent episode of the 80,000 Hours Podcast hosted by Rob Wiblin, Cotra spoke about the rapid advances in AI and what the future might hold. Cotra, who works closely with METR, a non-profit organisation that measures whether and when AI systems might pose catastrophic risks to society, suggests that while many economists assume AI will bring steady growth similar to what the Industrial Revolution did over the past century. This acceleration, she suggests, could be far more dramatic if artificial general intelligence (AGI) comes and begins improving itself.
“I think that there’s a pretty good chance that by 2050 the world will look as different from today as today does from the hunter-gatherer era,” Cotra said during the conversation. “It’s like 10,000 years of progress rather than 25 years of progress driven by AI automating all intellectual activity.”
Cotra, predicts that in the early 2030s humanity could see what she describes as “top-human-expert-dominating AI, which is an AI system that can do tasks that you can do remotely from a computer better than any human expert.” In practical terms, that would mean AI systems will manage to outperform the best human professionals in fields such as software engineering, scientific research or even virology. At that stage, she argues, progress may not simply speed up, it could compound.
What will make AI smarter than humanity?
The reason behind this potential leap in machine intelligence, she suggests, lies in feedback loops. Cotra explains that if AI systems can automate AI research and development itself, they could design better models faster than human researchers ever could. If that is paired with advances in robotics and manufacturing, AI could eventually help build the physical infrastructure, including chips and data centres, required to run even more advanced systems.
Notably, Cotra’s outlook on AI’s potential is not isolated. Several AI leaders around the world have repeatedly spoken about how powerful these systems could become. Recently, xAI boss Elon Musk also spoke about how powerful machines will become and how it will change society.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Musk predicted that AI could become smarter than any individual human by the end of 2026. “I think we might have AI that is smarter than any human by the end of this year, and I would say no later than next year,” he said. “By 2030 or 2031, call it five years from now, AI will be smarter than all of humanity collectively.”
According to Musk, the real transformation will not come from software alone. He believes the major economic shift will happen when advanced AI will be paired with robotics. “If you have ubiquitous AI that is essentially free or close to it and ubiquitous robotics,” he said, “you will have an explosion in the global economy that is truly beyond all precedent.”
In fact, Nobel laureate and Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis has also spoken about how transformative AI could become in the coming years. He has suggested that the technology could usher in an era of abundance, saying it may be “10 times bigger than the Industrial Revolution — and maybe 10 times faster”.
