For Anthropic to become the world's most profitable company, LLMs would need to have a much greater impact on productivity than they do currently. Previously, there was a lot of excitement that LLMs would become much more generally capable through scaling. Now that excitement seems to have greatly diminished.

In 2024, Ilya Sutskever, a prominent AI researcher and a co-founder of OpenAI, declared that the age of scaling is over. He said that AI must return to an age of research, rather than scaling. In 2025, Sutskever reiterated this point of view. I haven't seen other prominent people at AI companies state it so starkly. But I have noticed a dissipation of the excitement around scaling. Few people (if any) seem to talk about scaling with the optimism they used to.

This leaves the question: if not scaling, then what would make LLMs much more generally capable within the next 5 to 10 years?

Two possible answers are:

• Some unknown thing that will be discovered through research at some point
• Some unknown thing that will be discovered through research at some point when AI research is automated by AI, a concept often referred to as recursive self-improvement or RSI

Why should we believe recursive self-improvement will happen within the next 5 to 10 years? LLMs can't fully automate ostensibly much simpler jobs like translation or customer support. Why would AI research be so easy to automate? Why would that particular job be automated when no other job has been?

Many forms of automated machine learning or AutoML have been pursued for many years. The results have been quite modest compared to what people imagine when they imagine recursive self-improvement. Why would AutoML suddenly have a breakout success now, when it hasn't for so many years?

LLMs have become important in coding and certain forms of math research, two domains where they're extremely naturally well-suited to succeed. We may see LLMs open up a few more niches in the future — or maybe not. But this is distinct from the vision that LLMs are a form of general-purpose, generally useful AI that will enhance the productivity of everything everywhere all at once. That vision shows no signs of coming to fruition. Instead we see what we've seen with previous advances over the last 14 years of deep learning: AI systems that are really good at a few specific things.

My point about USAID was precisely that political and institutional decisions can dwarf private philanthropy, and that I want people thinking seriously about how they can influence decisions of that scale.

Okay, but what does that have to do with EA? What does that have to do with my original comment? What point were you trying to make? I don't see the logical connection.

It's not just a collection of charities distributing donations.

You were the one who brought up the dollar amounts! Why did you do that?

I'm not sure why you brought up this point about political influence in the first place, but incidentally, it helps my point.

Culture, leadership, and ethics can have huge downstream consequences if a social movement gains political influence. There are two important considerations there:

1. Can EA earn enough trust in the wider world to gain political influence? Can it address reasonable concerns about whether EA should have power or influence?
2. Does EA deserve political influence? Can it be trusted? Might it do harm?

This leads us to ask: is EA's culture healthy? Do EA orgs and EA leaders have good responses to problems within the movement? Are EA orgs, EA leaders, and prominent individuals in EA ethically upstanding? If they do illegal or unethical things, is there accountability and consequences from the EA movement?

There are many serious concerns along these lines, such as:

• The Centre for Effective Altruism was controlled by a cult, Leverage Research, in the late 2010s; that same cult also organized the first EA conferences and helped organize the first EA Globals.
• The EA Forum and the annual Manifest conference have an ongoing problem with scientific racism.
• The co-founder of an EA-supported charity, Stop AI, threatened to do a mass shooting at the OpenAI offices. His whereabouts are still unknown.
• Manifund made a corrupt quid pro quo arrangement with Caroline Ellison as a reward for her crimes related to FTX that financially benefited Manifund and its founder, Austin Chen. The Centre for Effective Altruism has sanctioned Manifund, but not Austin Chen or Caroline Ellison personally, and so far no other EA orgs or EA leaders have imposed any sanctions.
• There's a lot of false or misleading stuff promoted by the EA community, such as 80,000 Hours' egregiously misinformational video on AI 2027.

In light of things like these, reasonable people ought to have serious doubts about whether the culture and leadership of EA can be trusted.

Should you trust the Centre for Effective Altruism, which was once under the control of a cult?

Should you trust the EA Forum, which allows the promotion of scientific racism?

Should you trust Stop AI, which came perilously close to becoming effectively a domestic terrorist organization?

Should you trust Manifund, which is engaged in brazen financial corruption?

Should you trust 80,000 Hours, which blatantly misleads its viewers on YouTube?

No, probably not!

But I am loyal to the kind, thoughtful people I know personally who are working incredibly hard to make the world a better place. I think they deserve better than sweeping condemnations of the movement they've dedicated so much of themselves to.

It's nothing personal. My loyalty is to the world and to doing the right thing. Regardless of whether doing the right thing benefits EAs — emotionally, financially, or otherwise. Nothing against your friends, but the purpose of EA is to benefit the global poor and factory farmed animals, not your friends.

This is why entangling your personal identity and self-esteem with effective altruism can be so dangerous. It can make you unwilling or literally emotionally unable to take problems with EA seriously and work to correct them.

I don't follow your logic.

What does the scale of USAID cuts have to do with anything? The USAID cuts are massive and terrible. They are massive and terrible compared to all private giving, including all effective altruism-related giving. The USAID cuts under the second Trump admin are well in excess of $11 billion a year, which is apparently the total amount that was given privately in 2023. Figures from a few years ago via Our World in Data:

I don't know if EAGrantsDatabase.org is accurate, but it tracks less than $1.2 billion in grants per year. Grants for global health and development are said to be around $400 million to $500 million a year. According to Bloomberg, Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna's net worth is around $13 billion total, which is less than one year of USAID cuts.

According to two different methodologies, one used in 2024 (see page 6), and one used in 2025 (see page 7), GiveWell estimates that it directs or influences at most around $600 million a year. However, it changed its methodology in 2025 to make it more conservative.

So, what was the point of bringing up USAID? Effective altruism can't compete with the scale of USAID, either. If you were trying to say this is why people should get involved in politics rather than private philanthropy, I would understand your point. Why is this a justification for EA? What does it have to do with anything?

Yep, it would be a lot of revenue, very fast!

In the older thread I linked to, a few people's rationale for forecasting that much revenue that fast seemed to be: just look at the graph! But you can look at literally thousands of graphs about companies' financial performance and note that their periods of fastest growth do not sustain indefinitely...

If there is a good rationale for thinking Anthropic will do $514 billion in 2027, whatever it is, it's not "just look at the graph".

If you want to know Anthropic's annualized revenue, the simplest way is just to take its most recent quarter's revenue and multiply by four. Q3 revenue is not disclosed in the S-1, but Reuters reported it at $16.8 billion. Times four that's $67.2 billion.

Something that could be useful as a guidepost is a) if Anthropic gives its own revenue estimates for 2027 and 2028 (e.g., Reuters reported in August that that Anthropic estimated $190 billion to $200 billion for 2028) and b) when Wall Street inevitably publishes its estimates. Anthropic and Wall Street know how to look at graphs but will not forecast $514 billion in revenue in 2027.

Another bet that may be of interest:

Anthropic just released its S-1 form, which contains the official financial information it must report to the SEC in order to go public. From the S-1, we now know that Anthropic's revenue grew more than 100x (specifically, 112x) from 2023 to 2025. Revenue was:

• $41 million in 2023
• $386 million in 2024
• $4.59 billion in 2025

A few people in the EA community apparently believe this revenue growth rate will continue for the next several years at least. However, I am confident we won't see Anthropic bring in $514 billion in revenue in 2027, which is what extrapolation would imply.

Indeed, I'm confident that Anthropic won't hit half of what extrapolation would imply, which is $257 billion in 2027.

I'm willing to bet as much and would be delighted to wager $20 on it, to be donated to the charity of the winner's choice.

Anthropic just released its S-1 form, which contains the official financial information it must report to the SEC in order to go public. From the S-1, we now know that Anthropic's revenue grew more than 100x (specifically, 112x) from 2023 to 2025. Revenue was:

• $41 million in 2023
• $386 million in 2024
• $4.59 billion in 2025

A few people in the EA community apparently believe this revenue growth rate will continue for the next several years at least. However, I am confident we won't see Anthropic bring in $514 billion in revenue in 2027, which is what extrapolation would imply.

Indeed, I'm confident that Anthropic won't hit half of what extrapolation would imply, which is $257 billion in 2027.

I'm willing to bet as much and would be delighted to wager $20 on it, to be donated to the charity of the winner's choice.

I also have an open offer for a more general AI bubble bet.

Update (Friday, October 30th at 5:45pm Eastern):

Here's a good article on this topic. Two economists look at Anthropic's S-1 and ask whether a $2 trillion valuation is reasonable: https://econjared.substack.com/p/the-fantastical-promises-of-a-2-trillion

Since this is just a $20 bet for charity, it's purely symbolic and recreational.

If you want to avoid the money aspect altogether, you could just strongly commit to a prediction that by January 1, 2034, the nine aforementioned news outlets will not all report as fact (not opinion or editorial) that the AI bubble has popped.

I don't think betting makes sense at all if you're doing it for financial reasons. Bets are not legally binding. If you win and the other person decides not to pay up, you have no legal recourse. Similarly, if you lose and decide to pay up, you have no way of knowing if the other person would have paid up if they had lost.^[1]

Part of the theory behind betting is that it's cognitively helpful because it encourages you to mentally focus much more intensely and carefully on your predictions. That might be true, but there are other considerations I haven't seen many people bring up:

• Gambling is fun and addictive, and often induces irrational behaviour (e.g., reckless betting, gambling addiction)
• The idea of winning and losing, especially in public, makes it way more tempting to dig in to your position and way more unappealing to concede you were wrong, or just to reweigh the question evenhandedly
• People can challenge each to other to bets as an alternative to discussion, and even throw money around (or threaten to throw it around) to put an end to a discussion

For this bet, my thinking is just: betting is fun and this is a fun, small stunt I can use to make a point.

It looks like Tesla has abandoned the idea of upgrading cars to HW5 and will stick with the current hardware, HW4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Autopilot_hardware#AI5_(Hardware_5)

(Incidentally, AI also still isn't writing 90% of code.)

Thanks for writing this. It is... strange... and disturbing... that there is any need at all for you to write such a post, but, anyway, it's good that you did and I appreciate that.

The commonsense answer is actually stricter than what you propose: Caroline Ellison (or anyone else convicted of crimes at FTX or Alameda) should probably never be employed by any EA organization, and certainly not in a financial role shortly after her release from prison, without doing anything to try to redeem herself or prove she can be trusted. Especially not since Austin Chen explicitly said the hire was a reward and thanks for money Manifold and Manifund got from FTX. Caroline Ellison should not be rewarded and thanked for her work involving FTX or Alameda.

I also doubt that any deal was arranged in advance, but since Austin said this was one of his motivations, that makes it a quid pro quo. If people are hung up on the definition of quid pro quo and whether it applies to this case, at least we can say that this is corrupt.

I particularly agree with this part:

From the outside, to be frank, it’s quite infuriating that in the good times, whenever all of the EAs and rationalists are trying to save the world, it’s one big team with everyone largely supporting each other, but then as soon as someone does a crime or owes money, suddenly none of these orgs have ever heard of one another.

It would be so easy for EA organizations and individual EA leaders to follow suit with the Centre of Effective Altruism, which has banned Manifund from its events, or Andy Masley, whose tweet you show vowing to boycott Manifund and Manifold. Indeed, the CEA and others could go further by also banning Austin Chen and Caroline Ellison as individuals.

The main purpose of this is not to look good but to do the right thing. Do you want the EA movement to be a place where there are no (or minimal) negative consequences for corruption? There's a lot people need to be able to disagree about or do differently but still tolerate each other and try to get along. But, come on, if this isn't an ethical red line, what is?

I can empathize that people are grappling with ethical principles that are each deeply held yet seem to oppose one another. For instance:

• Every human being on Earth deserves unconditional compassion, empathy, and universal love, including patience, forgiveness, and second chances
• Crimes and severe moral transgressions must be deterred through punishment

Or:

• We should make generous assumptions about people's intentions, motivations, beliefs, and goals
• We can't automatically, uncritically believe all people all the time about their stated intentions, motivations, beliefs, or goals (e.g., otherwise, a lot of people could get away with crimes just by professing their innocence)

Or:

• We need to have a classically liberal tolerance for different views, values, principles, moral beliefs, and so on
• From the perspective of certain views, values, principles, moral beliefs, etc., the most evil acts in the world are rational and morally right, so liberal tolerance can only go so far

The push and pull of these principles can be confusing. In many cases, it is vexing how to integrate or reconcile them — how to resolve the apparent opposition. But this is not one of those vexing cases. Ultimately, it's clear and straightforward. You don't reward crime. You don't put people who've committed financial crimes involving EA in a financial management role at an EA charity. What's at stake here is not the concept of universal compassion or forgiveness. It's just common sense.

There are a million other things a person can do in the world than manage money at an EA charity. And, if for some strange reason managing money at an EA charity is their God-given destiny that they must fulfill within their lifetime, there are a million other things they can do while they work to redeem themselves and prove they can be trusted. Which could take many years and is never guaranteed to succeed.

If people are really curious and want a deeper understanding of this topic, I'm sure there are an abundance of good resources on the topic of criminal rehabilitation from people who have practical experience and a lot of knowledge. There are many people who take the perspective that our approach to criminal justice is excessively punitive and retributive, and advocate what they see as a more compassionate and forgiving alternative. Yet I'm certain they would not see Manifund's hiring of Caroline Ellison as an acceptable situation.