Toby Ord

tobyord.comCurating the World — Toby OrdHow much information is in a photograph? I suggest there is very little, about 42 bytes. Understanding why changes how we see photography.

6 Sept

Curating the World How much information is in a photograph? I suggest there is very little — about 42 bytes. Understanding why changes how we see photography. www.tobyord.com/writing/cura...

B R O A D T I M E L I N E S We should have neither short AI timelines, nor long timelines, but a broad probability distribution over when transformative AI will arrive. My new essay explains why & explores the implications of such deep uncertainty. 🧵 1/

But I want to stress that none of this implies we can slack off. We’re in a race against AI timelines. It is just that we don’t know if that race is a sprint or a marathon. In either case, time is of the essence. 21/

forethought.orgBroad AI Timelines: Planning Under UncertaintyWhen will AI transform the world? Toby Ord argues we should accept uncertainty and adopt “broad AI timelines” to guide better decisionmaking and planning.

For more thoughts on broad timelines, take a look at the full essay: forethought.org/research/bro... 22/22

These things are often highly leveraged, so are still worth doing even if there is a moderate chance that they pay off too late to help (an 80% chance of 5x is still great EV). As well as hedging against short timelines we need to make the most of long ones. 19/

Overall, we need a balanced portfolio of work aimed at short timelines and work aimed at long ones. 20/

China may have caught up with the West on chip production; Taiwan may have been invaded. There might be double-digit unemployment and an angry public. So plans that are outside the current Overton window may be inside the Overton window that matters. 17/

5. There are many long-term plans of action that can pay off handsomely. Things like founding a research field or a company, building a movement, training promising students, and foundational research. 18/

3. We should hedge against transformative AI coming very early, when we'd be least prepared. Such timelines are more important than their raw probability suggests. 15/

4. We shouldn't over-index on current circumstances, as the world may look very different when transformative AI arrives. e.g. if it comes in 2035, the technologies and leading companies may look very different, as may the political and geopolitical landscapes. 16/

1. This isn't an excuse to go with your favourite timeline, just because experts find it credible. Decision making under uncertainty requires taking all credible timelines seriously (including the very short and very long). 13/

2. We can't just wait until the experts agree. That won't happen until it is too late. At that point, the only options are knee-jerk policy responses. So waiting for agreement is tantamount to committing to only the bluntest and least effective options. 14/

For my forecast, both of these are true simultaneously: the distribution has an early peak, but also a long tail. 11/

So that's the broad timelines claim: we should be thinking probabilistically about when transformative AI will arrive and the range of credible dates is very broad. But what follows from this? How do we act under this severe uncertainty? 12/

These distributions are so hard to summarise that I think part of the timelines debate stems from people describing different parts of the same elephant… 9/

Those concerned (or excited) about AI point to the substantial chance that it comes within just a few years — before anyone’s ready. While others say it is more likely transformative AI arrives a decade or more from now. 10/

And I think that is actually a pretty good summary of Kokotajlo's uncertainty and of the uncertainty of experts in general. "No idea" is going a bit too far, but it is a better summary than "4 years" (or any other number). 7/

Here's my own current forecast for when transformative AI will arrive (AI powerful enough to take over were it misaligned, and to double the global rate of scientific and tech progress). It is similarly shaped but even broader. 8/

It is very hard to summarise that forecast with a single year. If he were to simply say '4 years', that would suggest to most people that he thought it was about 3 to 5 years. Any point estimate fails to do it justice. 5/

A smart policy maker who understood this forecast might summarise it as: "Oh, so you are saying you have no idea when it will happen — it could be next year, or it could be 6 presidential terms from now. And you’re saying there is a 1 in 5 chance it isn’t even in that range." 6/

Here are three expert AI forecasts (from 2023) addressing “In what year would AI systems be able to replace 99% of current fully remote jobs?” This is very broad uncertainty between experts and a closer look shows that even each individual expert has very wide uncertainty. 3/

@givingwhatwecan.bsky.social

e.g. here is Daniel Kokotajlo's current forecast for AI that performs better at every topic than human experts in that topic. His median is 4 year's time, but his 80% confidence interval ranges from 1 year to 25 years. 4/

Here is the range of credible dates for AGI, across all forecasters at Metaculus. This is a huge range of uncertainty. The median date is 2033, but their 80% confidence interval is from 2026 to 2067 — between 0.25 years and 41 years. 2/

Toby Ord reposted

Our World in Data

@ourworldindata.org

14 Mar

The median age in China has rapidly caught up with the United Kingdom— In 1965, the median age in the United Kingdom was almost twice that of China. Half of the people in the UK were younger than 34 years, and half were older. In China, this midpoint was just 18 years.

Toby Ord reposted

Giving What We Can🔸

23 Dec 2025

Being born is a roll of the dice. Most of us got insanely lucky. Imagine you had to roll again, how would you want the world to look? www.givingwhatwecan.org/birth-lottery

givingwhatwecan.orgBirth LotteryIf you were reborn today, where would you land? And how would that change your life?

esa.intGRB 250314A Pull-out (NIRCam image)GRB 250314A Pull-out (NIRCam image)

Dim Red Dot Scientists have just released a photo featuring a dim red dot. It is the light of a single star exploding in a galaxy so far far away that that nothing we do could ever affect it — even in the very fullness of time. It lies beyond the Affectable Universe. Let me explain… 1/🧵

You can find out much more about the affectable universe and the ultimate limits of causality in our universe in a paper I wrote called 'The Edges of Our Universe': 17/17 arxiv.org/pdf/2104.01191

And to find out more about the dark red dot itself (whose explosion was designated GRB 250314A), see ESA's report here: www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed...

So if beings from Earth and that distant galaxy set off towards each other at close to the speed of light, they could yet meet. 15/

Here's a diagram I made, showing our place in the affectable universe, and its place within even greater regions: 16/

So this image shows a star which is so far away that it is outside the affectable universe. Nothing we do here and now could ever affect it, and nothing that happens there now could ever affect the Earth. 13/

Though interestingly, current events in that star's galaxy could still affect *us*. Our affectable universe doesn’t include it and its affectable universe doesn’t include the Earth. But these spheres do overlap... 14/

The observable universe is (currently) about 3 times the diameter of the affectable universe, so there are many such stars that are observable but not affectable. Though until recently, we’d only been able to see entire galaxies of them as small smudges on the best Hubble images. 11/

However, when a star explodes in a supernova, it releases so much energy in such a short time that it can outshine its entire galaxy, making an individual star visible at such an immense distance. 12/

I call everything within this distance the "affectable universe". It is the lesser-known twin to the observable universe: The observable universe is all places we can currently observe, while the affectable universe is all places we can currently affect. 9/

Each year the observable universe grows in diameter as there is more time for the light to have reached us. Each year the affectable universe shrinks by the same amount as there is less time for our light to reach the distant galaxies before they drift away. 10/

But the new star whose supernova explosion has just been detected as a dim red dot in the blackness between distant galaxies is more than twice as far away — about 29 billion light years. This is so far away that our light can never catch up (and nor could anything else). 7/

One way to think about this is that there is a critical distance — about 16.5 billion light years — that demarcates the part of the universe we could ever affect. (This is all according to current known physics, assuming the standard ΛCDM cosmology). 8/

14.4 billion light years is a long way. Light would take light 14.4 billion years to travel that distance. But during those years the intervening space would keep expanding, so Icarus would be even further away and even 14.4 billion years from now the light still wouldn’t have reached it. 5/

en.wikipedia.orgMACS J1149 Lensed Star 1 - Wikipedia

But the light would be gaining on it — making up the distance faster than Icarus can drift away. In 35 billion years our light would finally catch up. So we *can* affect Icarus. 6/

What is going on? Until 2022, the furthest individual star ever discovered was “MACS J1149 Lensed Star 1” — aka “Icarus”. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MACS_J1... 3/

Icarus is currently about 14.4 billion light years from Earth and its light had been travelling for 9.3 billion years before it struck the lens of the Hubble Space Telescope. Those numbers differ because the space between us has expanded while the light was in flight. 4/

Whether or not we will ever be able to travel to other stars, we can usually affect them (and they can affect us) through the light we each emit. Shine a torch into the night sky and you will personally affect galaxies billions of light years away. But not in this case. 2/

Toby Ord reposted

Geoffrey Irving

@girving.bsky.social