We could be living in the most important century in history. Here's how Artificial Intelligence might uphold a historical trend of super-exponential economic growth, ushering us into a period of sudden transformation, ending in a stable galaxy-scale civilization or doom. All within the next few decades.

This video is based on Holden Karnofsky’s “most important century” blog post series: https://www.cold-takes.com/most-impor...

Below, you can find additional sources and further readings.

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Most important:

Holden Karnofsky’s “most important century” blog post series: https://www.cold-takes.com/most-impor...

Ajeya Cotra’s report on AI timelines: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/fo...

More sources:

Our World in Data, page on population growth: https://ourworldindata.org/world-popu...

Our World in Data, page on democracy: https://ourworldindata.org/democracy

Our World in Data, population of England: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/po...

Our World in Data, World GDP over the last two millennia: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wo...

Estimates of World GDP, One Million B.C – Present, by J. Bradford De Long: https://delong.typepad.com/print/2006...

An Essay on the Principle of Population, by Thomas Malthus: https://www.medicina.univr.it/documen...

Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990* Michael Kremer: https://robobees.seas.harvard.edu/fil...

Modeling the Human Trajectory, by David Roodman: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/rese...

GDP Growth (annual %), from The World Bank: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/...

2016 Expert survey on progress in AI: https://aiimpacts.org/2016-expert-sur...

Robert Miles’ (our narrator) YouTube channel on AGI alignment:    / robertmilesai  

Trends in the cost of computing, by AI Impacts: https://aiimpacts.org/trends-in-the-c...

Animation at minute 31:50 inspired by the cover of the book "Facing the Intelligence Explosion", by Luke Muehlhasuer: https://www.amazon.com/Facing-Intelli...

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Writer: Matthew Barnett
Producer: :3
Animator: :3
Narrator: Robert Miles
Sound design: Tony Dipiazza

▀▀▀▀▀▀▀CHAPTERS▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀

Chapters:

0:00 - A Very Unusual Time Period
4:29 - The 21st Century Could Be Much Weirder Than We Imagine
10:08 - The Duplicator
14:55 - The Most Important Invention Ever?
15:53 - When Will Advanced AI Arrive?
20:29 - Ajeya Cotra's Report on AI Timelines
27:54 - What Does This All Ultimately Mean?