Economists crunch METR data: no convincing evidence of an intelligence explosion yet
soumitrashukla9 · x · 2026-11-13
- Economists Luis Garicano and Alex Imas analyze whether AI progress constitutes an intelligence explosion, building on METR's report using internal Anthropic data (capability growth pace roughly 2x as of Oct 2026 vs Mar 2024–Oct 2025, with 1.3–3x uncertainty).
- Their methodological point: an explosion requires increasing returns — the research production function turning convex — and METR's calendar-time plots can't establish that; you must estimate the production function directly.
- Their estimates suggest recent progress is driven by more resources at a rate consistent with scaling laws, amounting to a one-time productivity boost, while ideas keep getting harder to find.
- They stress an explosion isn't ruled out, but current evidence doesn't convincingly show one.
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