What are we scaling?

In this monologue, Dwarkesh Patel discusses his skepticism regarding short timelines for achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). He argues that current AI development strategies, such as pre-training models with specific skills and using reinforcement learning, are insufficient because they don't address the core issue of enabling AI to learn and generalize like humans. Patel suggests that the focus should be on continual learning, where AI agents learn from diverse experiences and share knowledge, but acknowledges that achieving human-level on-the-job learning will be a gradual process. He also touches on the competitive landscape of AI model companies and why he believes that despite progress, the economic impact of AI is still limited by its inability to perform tasks requiring judgment, situational awareness, and context learned on the job.