The term “AGI” is almost useless at this point
We’ve entered the fuzzy cloud of “AGI-ish”—now we need more specific and ambitious milestones
TechEconomics
Helen Toner.
Helen Toner on AI policy, governance, and the economics of emerging technology.
Recent essays
10 of 10Taking Jaggedness Seriously
Why we should expect AI capabilities to keep being extremely uneven, and why that matters
Personalized AI is rerunning the worst part of social media's playbook
The incentives, risks, and complications of AI that knows you
Unresolved debates about the future of AI
How far the current paradigm can go, AI improving AI, and whether thinking of AI as a tool will keep making sense
Building supercomputers for autocrats probably isn’t good for democracy, actually
The shameless spin around Stargate UAE
In search of a dynamist vision for safe superhuman AI
Embracing creativity, risk-taking, and competition while staying clear-eyed about risks
2 big questions for AI progress in 2025-2026
On how good AI might—or might not—get at tasks beyond math & coding
Nonproliferation is the wrong approach to AI misuse
Making the most of “adaptation buffers” is a more realistic and less authoritarian strategy
The core challenge of AI alignment is “steerability”
"Steered to where" is a different question from "steerable at all"
"Long" timelines to advanced AI have gotten crazy short
The prospect of reaching human-level AI in the 2030s should be jarring