Greenblatt: AI research taste and conceptual breakthroughs are improving and will not lag behind
Ryan Greenblatt · AI Could Take Over in 2029. Is It Already Too Late? · Aug 27, 2026 · at 11:02
Ryan Greenblatt (Chief Scientist at Redwood Research) addresses the argument that recursive self-improvement in AI will fail due to a lack of intuitive research taste and conceptual breakthrough abilities.
0:00 / 0:26exact quote · 26.0s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“AIs seem Significantly better at engineering and grungy stuff and sort of just keeping trying than they seem to be at conceptual breakthroughs, but their ability to do sort of these. Breakthroughs, especially in easy to verify domains are improving. And like, you know, one example is like their ability in math, but even in like, you know, ML, their taste has been improving. I think it continues to improve. And so it's not so clear to me that this will lag super far behind.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Ryan Greenblatt
Misaligned AI will competently scheme and take over in 2029
“And then it turned out that somewhere along this transition, so at some point in 20, 29, you went from AIs that were kind of misaligned and reward hacky and sloppy and weren't really trying to do the right thing to AIs that are like competently scheming agains…”
AI research and development will be fully automated by early 2029
“In terms of what I would recommend people plan as though is happening, I think I would recommend planning as though full automation of AR and D maybe. Start of year, 20, 29, maybe earlier. And then also AR and D being like quite, quite automated by 20, 28, pos…”
AI CEOs lack clear plans to prevent an AI takeover
“I think that the AI company CEOs understand that they're on the path of building wildly smarter than human systems, like super intelligent AI systems. They understand that we don't really have a like clear thought through plan for how to manage the risks from …”
Frontier AI safety coordination requires slowing down China
“And then I think another aspect of this is specifically doing this in a way where part of the story is either slowing down China or cutting a deal with China such that China doesn't overtake and, you know, break this whole proposal.”
Automating AI research and hardware manufacturing enables AI takeovers
“If AIs could just automate AIR&D and automate, like, sort of the industrial process of building more computers, then you could quickly end up in a In a process where sort of like robots are building robots and the whole world is greatly transformed. And that v…”
AI has produced the vast majority of recent major mathematical breakthroughs
“Like, I don't think it's the case that most people in like DC would correctly answer that like the largest mathematical breakthroughs over the last two months have vast majority been from AI, which my understanding is that's true. At least if you measure size …”