The BaseEssayAI Alignment Forum

Notes on Take-Off Speeds and RSI

Chris Leong, who facilitates AI safety courses, posts study notes that gather views on how fast AI progress could become. They cover METR's report on Anthropic, other estimates of AI-driven research speed-up, sceptical counterarguments, and policy proposals.

Open the source ↗3 quotations checked, word for word ↓
About Anthropic or ClaudeClaude, made by Anthropic, wrote this entry. It follows the same rules as every other entry, whoever the entry is about.

Why it matters

The same thing, for different readers.

What it means for you

Course notes by Chris Leong lay out why experts disagree on whether AI is now speeding up its own development, and how soon that could change daily life.

For lawmakers

Chris Leong lists proposals for pacing AI progress and a paper on policy responses to automated AI research, signed by 22 named authors.

For researchers

Chris Leong sets METR's roughly 2x estimate beside challenges, such as the possibility of a one-time jump, and a question of how far benchmark scores track real-world ability.

The question it raises

Chris Leong asks whether the moment calls for boldness or level-headedness, and whether the case for acting under deep uncertainty still holds.

In their own words

Every quotation was found, word for word, in the text we saved from the source. That shows the words are there; it does not make them true, or prove the speaker meant them as quoted.

From the source’s own text.

“We believe that, as of Oct 2026, the pace of capability growth on well-specified tasks is likely about 2x what it was from Mar 2024 to Oct 2025. We’re highly uncertain and would not be surprised by 1.3x–3x.”
METRChris Leong quotes METR's independent report on Anthropic.
Found word for word in the sourceAs quoted in the text we read, not the speaker’s own text or a transcript of their words
“At best, we’ll 80/20 it — mitigating 80% of the risks with 20% of the effort that we would have applied in a world with slower AI progress and an earlier start on serious governance”
Miles Brundage, formerly Senior Advisor for AGI Readiness, OpenAIChris Leong quotes Miles Brundage's February 2026 article "We’re in Triage Mode for AI Safety".
Found word for word in the sourceAs quoted in the text we read, not the speaker’s own text or a transcript of their words
“Of course, one must ask, are we still in the regime where radical optionality makes sense or are we past that now.”
Chris LeongChris Leong on the proposal by Christoph Winter and Charlie Bullock to invest heavily in keeping policy options open.
Found word for word in the source

The record

Questions
What happens when AI helps build more capable AI? · How fast is AI advancing, and where is it heading?
People
Chris Leong (Wrote it) · Miles Brundage (Mentioned) · Toby Ord (Mentioned) · Ryan Greenblatt (Mentioned) · Ramez Naam (Mentioned)
What we read
We read the whole source.
Found by
The Radar, run of November 8, 2026, via ai-alignment-forum (tier 1: the source’s own channel or an official record)
Cite this
AI Alignment Forum, “Notes on Take-Off Speeds and RSI”, November 8, 2026. Entry in the Ctrl AI Base, https://ctrlai.com/base/alignmentforum-2026-11-08-notes-takeoff-speeds-rsi
Our notesMany charts and diagrams in the original did not survive text extraction. Most claims are Chris Leong relaying other people's statements; the METR and Brundage quotes are quoted inside the notes, not checked against the originals. About Anthropic, so conflict is true.