Doom or Bloom
Richard Sutton
@RichardSSutton on XLearning from experience could create successors worth welcoming.
How will AI change the world?
Across: his expressed DoomâBloom outlook. Up: scale of transformation.
DoomâBloom: 84 out of 100. Scale of transformation: 98 out of 100. Interpretation ranges: 75 to 100 horizontally, 94 to 100 vertically. These are interpretation coordinates, not event probabilities.
â14%
Inferred from his broader worldview and priorities. Approximate interpretation range: 0â68%. Applies to the outcome and conditions in his simulated answers; this is an inferred percentage.
No milestone timing was established. Dates, ânot sure,â âpossibly never,â and dependencies can all appear here when expressed.
Grouped by milestone, not spaced or ordered by inferred dates. AGI and superhuman AI retain his definitions.
A central assumption
But evidence about the scalability of experiential learning would matter most, because that is the mechanism behind my expectation that intelligence will eventually go beyond us.
Answer 2
If this assumption turned out differently, how would his outlook change?
What could change their mind
The most important discovery would be that intelligence cannot, in fact, grow open-endedly through interactionâthat learning from action, consequences, and grounded experience reaches a hard ceiling near the human level.
Answer 2
What evidence would be enough, and in which direction would it move his view?
More details
Transformative, broadly valuable gains are expected.
88 / 100
Interpretation range 67 to 100 on the qualitative scale.
Reasoning, consideration of alternatives, and handling of uncertainty in his simulated answers. This describes the simulated answers, not the real personâs intelligence or opinions.
95 / 100
Interpretation range 86 to 100 on the qualitative scale.
Human choices can make limited changes, but dominant forces constrain the outcome.
30 / 100
Interpretation range 16 to 59 on the qualitative scale.
AI is expected to remain bounded tools.
AI is expected to match people across most cognitive work.
Simulated position: AI is expected to substantially exceed people across cognitive work.
These interpretations keep his stated conditions. Benefits and harms can both be substantial. The ranges describe how we read his simulated answers, not statistical confidence intervals.
Simulated Assessment
Sources
Articles, interviews, and writings used to ground this simulated persona.
Toward Enactive Artificial Intelligence
Abstract page for arXiv paper 2605.24238: Toward Enactive Artificial Intelligence
arxiv.org
Welcome to the Era of Experience
storage.googleapis.com
Father of RL thinks LLMs are a dead end
Watch now (66 mins) | LLMs arenât Bitter-Lesson-pilled
dwarkesh.com
Understanding Intelligence: Amii interview and profile
Amii Fellow, Canada CIFAR AI Chair & Amii Scientific Advisor honoured with top prize in computing science alongside long-time collaborator Andrew Barto for their foundational work on reinforcement learning
amii.ca