Yes. Current AIs have enough general intelligence that I expect they're sufficient to replace a fair amount of manual labor.

There are still some expensive engineering problems, but they're relatively ordinary problems such as figuring out which robot models ought to be mass produced (without mass production, they'll be too expensive), substantial training to instill domain-specific knowledge, and maybe some need for more energy efficient GPUs.

As long as general-purpose AI is making rapid progress, it probably makes some sense for the robot industry to wait another year or two before choosing the specifics of what kinds of robots to mass-produce - AIs of 2028 are likely to learn domain-specific knowledge faster and more flexibly. But even if we get an AI pause by 2027, I expect at least 10% of manual labor to be replaced by robots by 2030.

Stopping AI really would be like halting technology itself, because you would be shutting off the source of nearly all growth.

If increases in basic AI intelligence were fully halted at 2027 levels, economic growth would still accelerate to something comfortably above 5%/year, due to continuing adaptations of AI to things like robotics.

None of the pause proposals look like they could be 100% effective at stopping increases in AI intelligence.

I used to give pretty high priority to economic growth, but now that growth in excess of 10%/year looks close to inevitable, I'm giving much lower priority to it.

I agree with a fair amount of what you wrote in this post, but I don't see much of an argument against slowing AI capability advances.

It sure doesn't look like Anthropic has lost. See https://polymarket.com/event/anthropic-500b-valuation-in-2026 for evidence.

One good prediction that he made was in his 1986 book Engines of Creation, that a global hypertext system would be available within a decade. Hardly anyone in 1986 imagined that.

But he has almost entirely stopped trying to predict when technologies will be developed. You should read him to imagine what technologies are possible.

That's mostly bearish for bonds because it increases inflation.

I haven't given that a lot of thought. AI is likely to have the strongest effects further out. A year ago I was mainly betting on interest rates going up around 2030 via SOFR futures, because I expected interest rates to go down in 2025-6. But now I'm guessing there's little difference in which durations go up.

These ETFs seem better than leveraged ETFs, for reasons related to the excessive trading by leveraged ETFs.

I see multiple reasons why bonds are likely to be bad investments over the next few years:

• AI is likely to drive up real interest rates, by making capital more productive.
• AI-induced job loss might cause the Fed to be less concerned about inflation.
• AI-induced job loss may reduce tax revenues, so the government will need to sell more bonds.
• Trump is pressuring the Fed to adopt policies that would cause inflation.
• If AI doesn't increase GDP growth, there are increasing doubts about whether the US is responsible enough to keep servicing its debt.
• In the past couple of months, some commodities have shown price surges that look more like a harbinger of inflation than like stable monetary conditions. See copper, silver, DRAM, and lithium.

Markets may be efficiently pricing a few of these risks, but I'm pretty sure they're underestimating AI.

I've been shorting t-bond futures, currently 6% of my net worth, and I'm likely to short more soon.

Oysters are significantly more nutrient dense than beef, partly because we eat the whole oyster, but ignore the most nutritious parts of the cow. So $1 of oyster is roughly as beneficial as $1 of pasture-raised beef. Liver from grass-fed cows is likely better than bivalves, and has almost no effect on how many cows are killed.

My experience suggests that there probably isn't much that you can do.

most of the billions of people who know nothing about AI risks have a p(doom) of zero.

This seems pretty false. E.g. see this survey.