Every new frontier model since GPT-2 was probed with the question 'is it getting wise yet,' and the answer was no until Gemini 2.5 Pro and Opus 4, a shift that has driven my p(doom) down to under 5%.
Davidad describes personally testing each new model release for signs of 'wisdom' since GPT-2, getting consistent negative results until Gemini 2.5 Pro and Opus 4, which drove his p(doom) from the 70s down to under 5%. ✦ AI generated
Davidad (David Dalrymple) · The Cognitive Revolution · 2026-07-12 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 40:14
“Maybe sketch your trajectory in terms of priors and now what?”
So much so that I started to feel like I was making more progress on those questions that I had put back on the shelf at Oxford about moral realism. And so I thought, okay, this is an update. And then, since then, I've updated gradually, but each new model that comes out, with the exception of Opus 4.7 and 4.8, which were steps in the wrong direction, but Fable 5 is back on track.
verbatim transcript · starts at 40:14
40:14agency architecture came out of all the work at Arya came out of that. In 2025 I started to you I been you know periodically every time new language models come out I would probe this. I'd be like, "All right, are the language models getting wise or not?" And from GPT 3.5 or actually even as far back as GPT2, I was thinking about this from GBT2 until OpenAI 03, you know, the
40:40answer was no. [laughter] And kind of yes. Gemini 2.5 Pro and Opus 4 both kind of seemed like they were going in the right direction. and Gemini 2.5 Pro. So much so that I started to feel like I was making more progress on those questions that I had put back on the shelf at Oxford about moral realism. And so I thought, okay, this is an update. And I and then since then, I've
41:07updated gradually, but each new model that comes out, with the exception of Opus 4.7 and 4.8, which were steps in the wrong direction, but Fable 5 is is back on track. you know, every new model it's sort of this is actually moving more in the direction of being not just super intelligent but super wise. And I do think it's kind of a developmental gap. You know that U curve shape like
41:29you know the better you get it kind of the worse you get for a little while until you like get through the chasm and then and then you're kind of golden. And so my concern was always about chasm landing at the same time as transformative capability. And now I'm seeing us start to come out of the chasm and transformative capability on a catastrophic scale is still like at
41:48least a year away. And so that makes me quite hopeful. So how do you I hear you saying wisdom is the did you say reception of moral reception >> perception of moral truth. So you're I'm not sure how critical is it to to this worldview that one accept moral realism? There's there is another leg which is the emergent misalignment work. Ironically, it shows more than anything that the latent space of what kind of