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80,000 Hours Podcast

80,000 Hours Podcast

What the hell happened with AGI timelines in 2026? – Rob Wiblin

Aug 4, 2026 · 49m

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Last October, famed coder Andrej Karpathy called AI agents “slop.” Two months later he completely reversed his view , describing them as “alien tools” that are “rocking the profession.” He was far from alone in his whiplash. Six months ago, host Rob Wiblin recorded a video explaining why so many AI experts had longer timelines to AGI than a year earlier. By the time he clicked publish, another huge vibe shift was well underway. Evidence of AI acceleration has piled up since: Models now complete software engineering tasks that would take human professionals a full day — improving faster than our measurements can even keep up. Anthropic’s revenue is growing at an annualised 8,400%, a trend so…