The End of Scaling?

Multiple news outlets, including The Information, Bloomberg, and Reuters [see sources] are reporting an "end of scaling" for the current AI paradigm. In this episode we look into these articles, as well as a wide variety of economic forecasting, empirical analysis, and technical papers to understand the validity, and impact of these reports. We also use this as an opportunity to contextualize the realized versus promised fruits of "AI".

• (00:23) - Hot off the press
• (01:49) - The end of scaling
• (10:50) - "Useful tools" and "agentic" "AI"
• (17:19) - The end of quantization
• (25:18) - Hedging
• (29:41) - The end of upwards mobility
• (33:12) - How to grow an economy
• (38:14) - Transformative & disruptive tech
• (49:19) - Finding the meaning
• (56:14) - Bursting AI bubble and Trump
• (01:00:58) - The muck

• The Information article - OpenAI Shifts Strategy as Rate of ‘GPT’ AI Improvements Slows
• Bloomberg [article] - OpenAI, Google and Anthropic Are Struggling to Build More Advanced AI
• Reuters article - OpenAI and others seek new path to smarter AI as current methods hit limitations
• Paper on the end of quantization - Scaling Laws for Precision
• Tim Dettmers Tweet on "Scaling Laws for Precision"

Empirical Analysis

• WU Vienna paper - Unslicing the pie: AI innovation and the labor share in European regions
• IMF paper - The Labor Market Impact of Artificial Intelligence: Evidence from US Regions
• NBER paper - Automation, Career Values, and Political Preferences
• Pew Research Center report - Which U.S. Workers Are More Exposed to AI on Their Jobs?

Forecasting

• NBER/Acemoglu paper - The Simple Macroeconomics of AI
• NBER/Acemoglu paper - Harms of AI
• IMF report - Gen-AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work
• Submission to Open Philanthropy AI Worldviews Contest - Transformative AGI by 2043 is <1% likely

Externalities and the Bursting Bubble

• NBER paper - Bubbles, Rational Expectations and Financial Markets
• Clayton Christensen lecture capture - Clayton Christensen: Disruptive innovation
• The New Republic article - The “Godfather of AI” Predicted I Wouldn’t Have a Job. He Was Wrong.
• Latent Space article - $2 H100s: How the GPU Re