When Will the World Notice Superintelligence Is Coming?

Leopold Aschenbrenner says the world still has a few more years of midgame before superintelligence feels obvious. A few more shocks like 2023 will update more people, the trend lines will become clear, and the shift will follow the early coronavirus pattern.

He says February 2020 feels a lot like today. The exponential was already visible, an utterly crazy thing was impending, and most of the world still did not realize it. The mayor of New York told people to go out to the shows and treated the warning as Asian racism. Once people saw the exponential, crazy, radical reactions followed.

Dwarkesh Patel says a March 2020 moment will come for superintelligence. He expects the reaction Aschenbrenner lays out in the series: America deciding it has to run a Manhattan Project.