In mid-2023, within the “RLSlow” research project, we saw the first results that gave us confidence that we will be able to scale the training of reasoning models, unlocking the capability of pretrained models to form their own chains of thought. Szymon and I spent that night at the office, thinking not about the incredible benchmark numbers, products, or scientific results that this technology will deliver - but rather, trying to process the sobering fact we will actually see machines meaningfully smarter than ourselves in our lifetime, and we already see the shape of these systems; wondering how to alert people to the significance of this.

Three years later, reasoning language models are a rapidly growing part of the economy and starting to push the boundaries of science. They are able to operate computers and graphical interfaces, collaborate with people and each other, and carry out research projects. They are also transforming the landscape of computer security, and in that present clear new dangers.

A lot of new research happened in this period, and our understanding of these systems is again a little different than it was in 2023. Based on internal results, I have a strong expectation that this speed of progress could be sustained into recursive self-improvement. If AI development continues along its current path, the systems we’ll see in the next few years are likely to represent further capability jumps of equal or larger magnitude, and to increasingly drive their own development.

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