# New Paradigms Won't Save You

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/astral-codex-ten-podcast-226483/new-paradigms-won-t-save-you
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/astral-codex-ten-podcast-226483/new-paradigms-won-t-save-you.md
Podcast: [Astral Codex Ten Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/astral-codex-ten-podcast-226483)
Published: 2026-06-19T11:29:00+00:00
Episode link: https://sscpodcast.libsyn.com/new-paradigms-wont-save-you
Audio file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sscpodcast/New_Paradigms_Wont_Save_You.mp3?dest-id=586545
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/astral-codex-ten-podcast-226483/episodes/new-paradigms-won-t-save-you
Duration seconds: 348

## Resource

One popular objection to AI concerns is to declare that LLMs can never be AGI. You need a "new paradigm". Therefore, AGI is so far in the future that it's not worth worrying about. A common counterargument is to claim that no, LLMs can become AGI. But even without that counterargument, I think the "therefore" fails on its own terms. The key question is: how much of a new paradigm do we need? The landmark discoveries on the road to modern LLMs are something like: 1950s: Neural networks 1967: Multi-layer perceptron 2010: Modern deep learning 2017: Transformer, LLM 2022: RLHF, chatbots 2024: Chain of thought / test-time compute We can think of this as an "evolutionary tree", where a given LLM (let's say Claude Opus 4.7) shares a recent "common ancestor" with all other chatbots, and only a very distant "common ancestor" with everything else descended from the multi-layer perceptron. If AGI needs a "new paradigm", what common ancestor can we expect AGI and LLMs to share? AGI will very likely use neural networks, because the human brain is a neural network and qualifies as an AGI. It will probably use deep learning, because although deep learning isn't exactly analogous to the brain, it seems like a pretty reasonable way to emulate the brain's learning algorithms onto computer hardware. Skeptics like Yann LeCun and Gary Marcus usually pinpoint LLMs/transformers as the step where we went wrong. LeCun thinks that the first AGIs may be within the deep learning paradigm (but not LLMs); Marcus thinks that they'll combine insights from deep learning with something else. How soon should we expect a new paradigm as revolutionary as LLMs/transformers? Since we got LLMs/transformers nine years ago, Lindy's Law suggests nine more years. How soon should we expect a new paradigm as revol…

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/astral-codex-ten-podcast-226483/episodes/new-paradigms-won-t-save-you/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/astral-codex-ten-podcast-226483/new-paradigms-won-t-save-you.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.