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AGI is still 30 years away — Ege Erdil & Tamay Besiroglu

Source: Dwarkesh Patel
Author: Dwarkesh Patel
Date: Jul 21, 2026

Why it matters

Why AGI may take three decades, not three years
Case for economy doubling yearly without an intelligence explosion
Contrarian take: the 'alignment' framing is fundamentally wrong

Chapters

00:00:00AGI will take another 3 decades
00:22:27Even reasoning models lack animal intelligence
00:45:04Intelligence explosion
01:00:57Ege & Tamay's story
01:06:24Explosive economic growth
01:33:00Will there be a separate AI economy?
01:47:08Can we predictably influence the future?
02:19:48Arms race dynamic
02:29:48Is superintelligence a real thing?
02:35:45Reasons not to expect explosive growth
02:49:00Fully automated firms
02:54:43Will central planning work after AGI?
02:58:20Career advice

Transcript

Ege Erdil and Tamay Besiroglu have 2045+ timelines, think the whole "alignment" framing is wrong, don't think an intelligence explosion is plausible, but are convinced we'll see explosive economic growth (economy literally doubling every year or two). This discussion offers a totally different scenario than my recent interview with Scott and Daniel . Ege and Tamay are the co-founders of Mechanize (disclosure - I’m an angel investor), a startup dedicated to fully automating work. Before founding Mechanize, Ege and Tamay worked on AI forecasts at Epoch AI . Watch on Youtube ; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify . ---------- Sponsors * WorkOS makes it easy to become enterprise-ready. With simple APIs for essential enterprise features like SSO and SCIM, WorkOS helps companies like Vercel, Plaid, and OpenAI meet the requirements of their biggest customers. To learn more about how they can help you do the same, visit workos.com * Scale’s Data Foundry gives major AI labs access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If you’re an AI researcher or engineer, learn about how Scale’s Data Foundry and research lab, SEAL, can help you go beyond the current frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh * Google's Gemini Pro 2.5 is the model we use the most at Dwarkesh Podcast: it helps us generate transcripts , identify interesting clips , and code up new tools. If you want to try it for yourself, it's now available in Preview with higher rate limits! Start building with it today at aistudio.google.com . ---------- Timestamps (00:00:00) - AGI will take another 3 decades (00:22:27) - Even reasoning models lack animal intelligence (00:45:04) - Intelligence explosion (01:00:57) - Ege & Tamay’s story (01:06:24) - Explosive economic growth (01:33:00) - Will there be a separate AI economy? (01:47:08) - Can we predictably influence the future? (02:19:48) - Arms race dynamic (02:29:48) - Is superintelligence a real thing? (02:35:45) - Reasons not to expect explosive growth (02:49:00) - Fully automated firms (02:54:43) - Will central planning work after AGI? (02:58:20) - Career advice Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

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