David Owen: Software-only AI singularity is impossible without scaling physical compute
David Owen · The 2045 Superintelligence Timeline: Epoch AI’s Data-Driven Forecast · Nov 24, 2025 · at 9:42
David Owen, a researcher at Epoch AI, addresses whether automated self-improving AI research software could trigger a software-only singularity without hardware expansion.
“I tend to lean towards, no, you actually need to do more experiments, and that means you can't get this software-only singularity”
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