When will AI automate all cognitive labor?
Added 2025-05-31 14:14:27 +0000 UTCEconomist Tom Davidson’s 2023 “compute-centric” model answers two questions: when could AI automate all current human labor, and how fast might that transition happen?
Davidson's model considers the resources required to train increasingly capable AI systems (compute × algorithmic efficiency) and the rate at which these resources grow. Simulating the model suggests a median arrival of AI that can automate 100% of human labor in 2043, with the jump from 20% to 100% automation taking roughly three years.
Dive deeper or test alternative assumptions for yourself:
• Interactive website — https://takeoffspeeds.com
• Tom Davidson's report — https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/what-a-compute-centric-framework-says-about-takeoff-speeds/
Comments
I might have missed it in the parameters, but this doesn't seem to take into account AI improving AI. I think it is counterproductive to act as though broadly superhuman AI is reasonably likely to be decades away, when general AI systems are already superhuman in a growing number of domains and we already can't completely rule out getting to ASI this year. For it to take until 2050 would require progress to suddenly and almost entirely halt for multiple decades, which without a global moratorium or some kind of grave disaster is less than 1% likely.
Nathan Metzger
2025-06-02 04:11:04 +0000 UTC
