Kevin Roose: In 2019 Dario Amodei Saw GPT-2 and Envisioned Adding 8 More Zeros of Compute
kevinroose · x · 2026-10-07
Journalist Kevin Roose recounted Dario Amodei's key 2019 insight: the scarce, non-public information at the time was that scaling worked, and worked predictably. Looking at GPT-2, Amodei judged you could add eight more zeros to the compute budget — from thousands of dollars to millions or billions — and performance might keep improving steadily. Leading the scaling team gave him this knowledge before anyone else, seeding Anthropic's bet.
Related event: Dario Amodei's 2019 AGI Memo Revealed, Predictions All Came True(2 posts)→
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