Tyler Cowen – The #1 Bottleneck to AI Progress is Humans

This is my fourth interview with the pre-eminent infovore Tyler Cowen – and yet I’m always hearing new stuff from him. We talked at the Progress Conference 2024 about why he thinks AI won't drive explosive economic growth, the real bottlenecks on progress, him now writing for AIs instead of humans, and the difficult relationship between being cultured and fostering growth – among many other things. Thanks to the Roots of Progress Institute (with special thanks to Jason Crawford and Heike Larson) for such a wonderful conference, and to @freethink for the videography. Roots of Progress Institute: https://rootsofprogress.org/ Sponsors - I’m grateful to Tyler for volunteering to say a few words about Jane Street. It's the first time that a guest has participated in the sponsorship. I hope you can see why Tyler and I think so highly of Jane Street. To learn more about their open roles, go to https://janestreet.com/dwarkesh Links Transcript: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/tyler-cowen-4 Apple Podcasts: http://apple.co/3RFuS7b Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/48EIEaESY0IGxf02pzIEIN?si=d2S1y6HUQuulAOGKVV7GhQ Timestamps (00:00:00) Economic Growth and AI (00:15:45) Founder Mode and increasing variance (00:30:19) Effective Altruism and Progress Studies (00:33:53) What AI changes for Tyler (00:45:45) The slow diffusion of innovation (00:50:41) Stalin's library (00:53:07) DC vs SF vs EU