Eric Jang on Dario's 'smooth exponentials': no single agent can bend the AI capability curve
ericjang11 · x · 2026-09-11
Eric Jang (VP at Google DeepMind) revisits Dario Amodei's essays Machines of Loving Grace and Adolescence of Technology to unpack the 'smooth exponential' view of AI progress. If machine intelligence truly 'emerges spontaneously from the right combination of data and raw compute,' then no single agent can alter the curve any more than one atom can redirect an exergonic reaction: rushing a paper or shutting a lab in protest wouldn't change the trajectory, because there are too many parallel paths to the same capability gains. A philosophical probe of what individual and institutional agency means under the exponential narrative.
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