Sam Altman unexpectedly brings his timelines to AGI forward, while OpenAI backtrack on superintelligence. None of these changes were heralded, but they are significant. Plus the new year brings new assessments of the true capability of models to automate 'large swathes of the economy'. I'll give my prediction on that front for 2025, announcement a new Simple Bench competition, and showcase Kling 1.6 vs Veo 2 vs Sora, and much more.

wandb.me/simple-bench

(Colab): https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1AVijcPnEkl8Gy_754XbRdG5m7Q5-9slg?usp=sharing

TheAgentCompany Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.14161v1

Sam Altman Major Interview: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-sam-altman-interview/?srnd=phx-ai

OpenAI Agent Coming Jan 2025: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/why-openai-is-taking-so-long-to-launch-agents?rc=sy0ihq

Altman Singularity: https://x.com/sama/status/1875603249472139576

Altman Original Timeline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dCPytNTnjk&t=621s

https://www.ft.com/content/34a7a082-e685-4e02-bca7-61ff89d99ed2

OpenAI Original Emails: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5jjk4CDnj9tA7ugxr/openai-email-archives-from-musk-v-altman-and-openai-blog

DeepMind Sky News 2014 Article: https://news.sky.com/story/google-buys-uk-intelligence-firm-deepmind-10419783

Altman Blog Reflections: https://blog.samaltman.com/reflections

OpenAI Changes Who Gets AGI: https://openai.com/index/why-our-structure-must-evolve-to-advance-our-mission/?s=09

OpenAI 5 Levels: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-11/openai-sets-levels-to-track-progress-toward-superintelligent-ai

Altman 2015: https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1

OpenAI React to Anthropic: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/how-anthropic-got-inside-openais-head?rc=sy0ihq

Microsoft $100B Definition: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-and-openai-wrangle-over-terms-of-their-blockbuster-partnership?rc=sy0ihq
Epoch Scramble for Task Benchmark: https://x.com/tamaybes/status/1876692639363612919

GPQA Progress: https://epoch.ai/data/ai-benchmarking-dashboard

Task Length Crucial for ARC-AGI: https://anokas.substack.com/p/llms-struggle-with-perception-not-reasoning-arcagi

RL Environment Tweet: https://x.com/vedantmisra/status/1876327518157807990

Jason Wei Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhpjpNXJDco

Miles Brunda

o3 isn’t one of the biggest developments in AI for 2+ years because it beats a particular benchmark. It is so because it demonstrates a reusable technique through which almost any benchmark could fall, and at short notice. I’ll cover all the highlights, benchmarks broken, and what comes next. Plus, the costs OpenAI didn’t want us to know, Genesis, ARC-AGI 2, Gemini-Thinking, and much more.

FrontierMath: https://epoch.ai/frontiermath

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.04872

Chollet Statement:https://arcprize.org/blog/oai-o3-pub-breakthrough

MLC Paper:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-training-method-helps-ai-generalize-like-people-do/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

AlphaCode 2: https://storage.googleapis.com/deepmind-media/AlphaCode2/AlphaCode2_Tech_Report.pdf

Human Performance on ARC-AGI: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.01374v1

Wei Tweet ‘3 months’:https://x.com/_jasonwei/status/1870184982007644614

Deliberative Alignment Paper: https://openai.com/index/deliberative-alignment/

Brown Safety Tweet: https://x.com/polynoamial/status/1870196476908834893

Swe-Bench Verified: https://openai.com/index/introducing-swe-bench-verified/

Amodei Prediction: https://x.com/OfirPress/status/1858567863788769518

David Dohan: 16 hours https://x.com/dmdohan/status/1870171404093796638

OpenAI Personal Writing: https://openai.com/index/learning-to-reason-with-llms/

https://simple-bench.com/

John Hallman Tweet: https://x.com/johnohallman/status/1870233375681945725

00:00 - Introduction

01:19 - What is o3?

03:18 - FrontierMath

05:15 - o4, o5

06:03 - GPQA

06:24 - Coding, Codeforces + SWE-verified, AlphaCode 2

08:13 - 1st Caveat

09:03 - Compositionality?

10:16 - SimpleBench?

13:11 - ARC-AGI, Chollet

The ‘Gemini 2 Era’ begins … with screen-sharing? But really, it’s a great free tool, for curiosity satisfying rather than bleeding-edge intelligence. I give you the benchmarks, the highlights and of course, the latest from OpenAI Advanced Voice Mode with Vision.

Plus Deep Research in Gemini Advanced, Simple Bench updates, Santa and what might be for some of you Google’s deflating admission.

00:00 - Introduction

00:38 - Live Interaction

03:43 - Gemini 2.0 Flash Benchmarks

05:10 - Audio and Image Output

06:38 - Project Mariner (+ WebVoyager Bench)

08:49 - But Progress Slowing Down?

10:43 - OpenAI Announcements + Games

https://aistudio.google.com/live

Gemini 2.0 Flash Benchmarks: https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini/

Project mariner: https://deepmind.google/technologies/project-mariner/

WebVoyager: https://x.com/laurentsifre/status/1858918588683296875/photo/1

Gemini Game play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKuGNHJBGsc

Advanced Voice Mode OpenAI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIQDnWlwYyQ

https://simple-bench.com/

Claude Computer Use: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/computer-use

Oriol Vinyals Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78mEYaztGaw&t=687s

After a 10 month wait, OpenAI have released Sora to paying users. With just a prompt it can generate videos of up to 20 seconds in lower resolutions, and 10 seconds at 1080p if you can fork out $200/month. I’ve tested it and read the system card. The user interface is quite beautiful, even if the videos themselves operate until entirely new rules of physics. But I can’t help wondering if OpenAI want up to focus on releases like this, rather than some quietly broken promises.

80,000 hours Website, Podcast + Channel:

https://80000hours.org/

https://open.spotify.com/show/2WzJwXWBDnn4iZ7odKwDib https://www.youtube.com/@eightythousandhours/videos

https://openai.com/sora/

Sora Countries: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10250692-sora-supported-countries

Sora Credits: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10245774-sora-billing-credits-faq

https://runwayml.com/ and https://pika.art/home

DeepMind Veo: https://deepmind.google/technologies/veo/

Sam Altman Ads as Last Resort: https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/openai-could-chase-intrusive-ads-as-last-resort

But OpenAI Considering Ads: https://www.inc.com/ben-sherry/is-openai-getting-into-the-advertising-business-the-company-is-sending-mixed-messages/91033533

OpenAI Backtracks on Microsoft AGI Clause: https://www.ft.com/content/2c14b89c-f363-4c2a-9dfc-13023b6bce65

As Microsoft Boast of Labor Savings: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsofts-new-sales-pitch-for-ai-spend-less-money-on-humans?rc=sy0ihq

OpenAI Military Pivot: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/12/04/1107897/openais-new-defense-contract-completes-its-military-pivot/

Employees Have Doubts: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/12/06/openai-anduril-employee-military-ai/?nid=top_pb_signin&arcId=KZIV7PLRHBCVNPAIAAAVUNRHIM&account_location=ONSITE_HEADER_ARTICLE

Oh boy. o1 pro mode out on the same night as o1 full. I read the 49 page paper, ran my own tests, spent my fuel allowance on Pro Mode and will give you all the highlights. Suffice to say the story is not as simple as it first appears.

Weights and Biases’ Weave: wandb.me/ai_explained

Plus, GPT-4.5? MLE Bench, Simple Update, Image Analysis and much more

o1 System Card: https://cdn.openai.com/o1-system-card-20241205.pdf

Apollo Research: https://www.apolloresearch.ai/research/scheming-reasoning-evaluations

Altman Tweet: https://x.com/AnonCEOMakeItAi/status/1864763052622504344

ChatGPT Pro: https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-pro/

Tibor Blaho: https://x.com/btibor91/status/1864709670470066605

Simple-bench.com

00:00 - Introduction

00:27 - ChatGPT Pro is $200

01:25 - OpenAI Benchmarks

03:20 - o1 System Card, o1 and o1 Pro Mode vs o1-preview

06:18 - Simple Bench surprising results on sample

08:31 - Weight & Biases

09:05 - Image Analysis Compared

12:51 - More Benchmarks and Safety

Calmest before the storm? Whatever analogy you want to use things had gotten quiet toward the end of 2024. But then tonight we got Genie 2, and a series of scheduled announcements from OpenAI. Sora is soon here, and o1, but I dive deeper into what it all means and whether reliability is on a path to being solved, ft: two recent papers.

Assembly AI Speech to Text: https://www.assemblyai.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=ai_explained

Plus Kling Motion Brush, Simple Bench QwQ update and much more.

Genie 2: https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/genie-2-a-large-scale-foundation-world-model/

Jim Cramer: https://x.com/jimcramer/status/1864068878692675625

Give Us Full o1: https://x.com/tszzl/status/1863882905422106851

Verge Scoop: https://x.com/tomwarren/status/1864326361415925861

O1 Learning to Reason Benchmarks: https://openai.com/index/learning-to-reason-with-llms/

SIMA AI: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.10179

Genie Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.15391

My Video on Genie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGKsfXkSXv8

Oasis Minecraft: https://x.com/risphereeditor/status/1852619965511204974

LLMs Procedural Knowledge Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.12580

Bag of Heuristics Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.21272

Jensen Huang Hallucinations: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/jensen-says-we-are-several-years-away-from-solving-the-ai-hallucination-problem-in-the-meantime-we-have-to-keep-increasing-our-computation

DeepSeek Interview: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/deepseek-ceo-interview-with-chinas

Kling Motion Brush: https://klingai.com/image-to-video

Tim Rocktaschel Book: https://geni.us/ArtificialIntelligence

00:43 - OpenAI 12 Days, Sora Turbo, o1

03:06 - Genie 2

08:26 - Jensen Huang and Altman Hallucination Predictions

09:45 - Bag of Heuristics Paper

11:40 - Procedural Knowledge Paper
13:02 - AssemblyAI Universal 2

13:45 - SimpleBench QwQ and Chinese Models

14:42 - Kling Motion Brush

A new and mysterious Gemini model appears at the top of the leaderboard, but is that the full story? I dig behind the headline to show you some anti-climactic results, give some context with leaks in the last 48 hours of diminishing returns to scaling, and add the response of Altman, OpenAI and co. The future is about to look a lot stranger...


80,000 hours Podcast and Channel: https://open.spotify.com/show/2WzJwXWBDnn4iZ7odKwDib
https://www.youtube.com/@eightythousandhours/videos

You can now gift memberships to AI Insiders (my Patreon w/ exclusive vids, network): https://www.patreon.com/AIExplained/gift


‘There is no wall’: https://x.com/sama/status/1856941766915641580

https://x.com/vedantmisra/status/1857148554105544708

Gemini Ranking: https://lmarena.ai/?leaderboard

API not yet up: https://x.com/OfficialLoganK/status/1857106844805681153

‘Just Die Chat’: https://x.com/koltregaskes/status/1856754648146653428

Google CEO tweet: https://x.com/sundarpichai/status/1857114106928718329

Sutskever Quote: https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-rivals-seek-new-path-smarter-ai-current-methods-hit-limitations-2024-11-11/

Another OpenAI Staffer Leaves: https://x.com/RichardMCNgo/status/1856843040427839804

Bloomberg Report: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-13/openai-google-and-anthropic-are-struggling-to-build-more-advanced-ai?s=09

Noam Brown on what OpenAI Researchers Believe: https://x.com/polynoamial/status/1855037689533178289

Clive Chan: https://x.com/itsclivetime/status/1855704120495329667

Chollet Responds to Altman: https://x.com/fchollet/status/1857060079586975852

https://x.com/sama/status/1856940152460869718

Altman Emails: https://x.com/TechEmails/status/1857285960997712356

Change of Heart: https://sd11.senate.ca.gov/news/senator-wiener-responds-openai-opposition-sb-1047

Amodei on ‘Empirical Regularities’: https://lexfridman.com/dario-amodei-transcript/

Verge Report: https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/25/24279600/google-next-gemini-ai-model-openai-december

OpenAI Agents in January: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-13/openai-nears-launch-of-ai-agents-to-automate-tasks-for-users?srnd=phx-ai

The last few days have seen two narratives emerge. One, derived from yesterday’s OpenAI leak in TheInformation, that GPT-5/Orion is a disappointment, and less of a leap than GPT-3 to GPT-4. The second comes from a series of 4 clips (shown in this video) from Sam Altman, regarding the ‘clear path’ to AGI. Let’s go beyond the headlines (and through papers like Frontier Math) to get closer to the ground truth…

Plus Universal-2, Sora comments, Claude 3.5 Haiku SimpleBench update, and a great new AI video.


Assembly AI Speech to Text: https://www.assemblyai.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=ai_explained

00:39 – Bear Case, TheInformation Leak

04:01 – Bull Case, Sam Altman

06:20 – FrontierMath

11:29 – o1 Paradigm

13:11 – Text to Video Greatness and Universal-2

TheInformation Leak: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-shifts-strategy-as-rate-of-gpt-ai-improvements-slows?rc=sy0ihq

Noam Brown Replies: https://x.com/polynoamial/status/1855453104394637444

Sam Altman Y-Combinator Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXCBz_8hM9w&t=1556s

Altman Reply: https://x.com/sama/status/1855100359511097828

https://simple-bench.com/

FrontierMath Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.04872

Frontier Math Blog Post: https://epochai.org/frontiermath

Tao: https://x.com/EpochAIResearch/status/1854996368814936250

MMLU Are We Done (cites me!): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2406.04127

Universal-2 https://www.assemblyai.com/research/universal-2

Noam Brown ‘We don’t know’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr_eYXdHFis

Anthropic Founder Response: https://x.com/jackclarkSF/status/1855485569998217231

Sora (Runway Comment): https://x.com/c_valenzuelab/status/1855026417354129455

Sora New Vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iETa2KDRuw

Darri3D Video: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1gn0n3z/can_you/