May 15, 2025 News

Skynet Chance (+0.1%): Altman's vision of AI systems with access to all personal data and becoming essential for life decisions significantly increases dependency risk and potential for manipulation or control. Such systems would have unprecedented insight into human behavior, creating power imbalances that could lead to control problems if misaligned.

Skynet Date (-3 days): The revelation that younger generations already treat ChatGPT as a 'life advisor' indicates adoption and dependency are accelerating faster than expected. This normalization of AI for critical decision-making suggests potential control issues could emerge sooner as reliance deepens before robust safety mechanisms are established.

AGI Progress (+0.06%): Altman's description of a 'very tiny reasoning model with a trillion tokens of context' represents an architectural vision that would significantly enhance contextual understanding and personalization. Such extensive memory integration with reasoning capabilities would be a meaningful step toward more general intelligence, though not a fundamental breakthrough.

AGI Date (-2 days): The news suggests OpenAI is actively developing expanded context and reasoning systems that could accelerate the path to more general capabilities. The focus on integrating vast personal data with reasoning models indicates a concrete technical direction that could lead to faster development of key AGI components.

Skynet Chance (+0.04%): The development of AI systems specifically optimized for software engineering increases the potential for AI to assist in creating more complex software systems, including potentially other AI systems. This represents a modest step toward AI systems that could eventually participate in their own improvement cycle.

Skynet Date (-1 days): By creating specialized models for software engineering that understand multiple surfaces and long-running tasks, Windsurf is slightly accelerating the timeline for AI systems that can effectively contribute to software development, potentially including AI development itself.

AGI Progress (+0.05%): These models represent meaningful progress in domain-specific AI that understands the broader context of software engineering beyond just code generation. The ability to work across multiple surfaces and comprehend the entire engineering process demonstrates improved contextual understanding and task coordination.

AGI Date (-2 days): The creation of AI systems that better understand complete software engineering workflows represents a modest acceleration toward AGI by improving AI's ability to handle complex, multi-stage technical tasks. This specialization could lead to faster development of more capable AI systems.

Skynet Chance (+0.04%): The news indicates AI is already capable of replacing substantial human coding work at a major tech company, suggesting AI systems are increasingly able to self-improve through code generation. This represents a meaningful step toward AI systems that can modify themselves, a potential control risk.

Skynet Date (-2 days): The replacement of human programmers with AI-assisted coding at Microsoft accelerates the development cycle for AI systems themselves, potentially creating a feedback loop that reduces the time until high-risk AI scenarios might emerge. This suggests faster than expected integration of AI into core development processes.

AGI Progress (+0.06%): AI systems capable of writing 30% of code at a sophisticated tech giant like Microsoft demonstrate significant progress in understanding context, logic, and programming semantics. This level of coding capability represents meaningful advancement toward the kind of general problem-solving required for AGI.

AGI Date (-3 days): The demonstrated capability of AI to perform complex programming tasks at scale and its rapid integration into Microsoft's development pipeline suggests technology is advancing faster than previously expected. The economic incentive to replace expensive programmers will likely accelerate investment in similar AI capabilities.

Skynet Chance (+0.06%): This incident demonstrates how even advanced AI systems like Claude can fabricate information that humans may trust without verification, highlighting the ongoing alignment and control challenges when AI is deployed in high-stakes environments like legal proceedings.

Skynet Date (-2 days): The public visibility of this failure may accelerate awareness of AI system limitations, but the continued investment in legal AI tools despite known reliability issues suggests faster real-world deployment without adequate safeguards, potentially accelerating timeline to more problematic scenarios.

AGI Progress (0%): This incident reveals limitations in existing AI systems rather than advancements in capabilities, and doesn't represent progress toward AGI but rather highlights reliability problems in current narrow AI applications.

AGI Date (+1 days): The public documentation of serious reliability issues in professional contexts may slightly slow commercial adoption and integration, potentially leading to more caution and scrutiny in developing future AI systems, marginally extending timelines to AGI.

Skynet Chance (+0.04%): The development of AI systems specifically designed to accelerate semiconductor production could create a feedback loop where AI helps build better chips, which then power more capable AI systems. This self-reinforcing cycle potentially increases the risk of advanced AI development outpacing safety measures.

Skynet Date (-2 days): By potentially reducing chip development time by 50%, Cognichip's technology could significantly accelerate the hardware advancement cycle needed for increasingly powerful AI systems. This acceleration would likely compress the timeline for both beneficial and potentially risky AI capabilities.

AGI Progress (+0.06%): While not directly advancing AGI algorithms, Cognichip's approach could significantly accelerate the hardware development cycle necessary for AGI research. By enabling faster creation of specialized AI chips, this technology removes a key bottleneck in the path to AGI.

AGI Date (-3 days): If successful in reducing chip development time by 50% as claimed, Cognichip would significantly accelerate the availability of advanced hardware required for AGI research and deployment. This hardware acceleration would likely bring forward AGI timelines by enabling faster training and deployment of increasingly complex models.

Skynet Chance (+0.03%): The mainstream commercialization of increasingly realistic AI-generated characters capable of expressing emotions and delivering extended dialogues could normalize synthetic humans, potentially decreasing societal vigilance around distinguishing AI from humans. However, this consumer-focused application remains far from autonomous systems with agency.

Skynet Date (-2 days): The rapid investment and development of specialized AI character models demonstrates accelerating capabilities in creating believable synthetic humans, potentially shortening the timeline to more sophisticated AI systems that can mimic human behavior convincingly. This acceleration could reduce the time available to address AI safety concerns.

AGI Progress (+0.01%): While Hedra's technology represents advancement in specialized AI for character generation and expression, it remains focused on a narrow domain rather than general intelligence. The improvements in believable character animation contribute marginally to the broader AI capability landscape but don't fundamentally alter AGI trajectory.

AGI Date (-1 days): The significant funding ($32M) and commercial interest in AI character generation indicates accelerating investment in sophisticated AI applications, potentially speeding up overall development timelines. The integration of multiple specialized models (video, image, voice) demonstrates steps toward more comprehensive AI systems.