AI Capabilities

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---
numericId: E660
title: AI Capabilities
description: Root factor measuring AI system power across speed, generality, and autonomy dimensions.
sidebar:
  label: Overview
  order: 0
lastEdited: "2026-01-03"
subcategory: factors-ai-capabilities
---
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AI Capabilities refers to how powerful AI systems become across multiple dimensions. This is a key root factor in the AI Transition Model because capability levels directly influence the probability and severity of various scenarios.

**For detailed tracking of current AI capabilities, see the Capabilities section.**

## Key Dimensions

<FactorSubItemsList factorId="ai-capabilities" />

## Capability Categories

The Knowledge Base tracks capabilities across several domains:

| Capability | Status | Risk Relevance |
|------------|--------|----------------|
| <EntityLink id="E186">Language Models</EntityLink> | Rapidly advancing | Foundation for all other capabilities |
| <EntityLink id="E246">Reasoning</EntityLink> | Emerging | Key for general intelligence |
| <EntityLink id="E61">Coding</EntityLink> | Human-competitive | Enables self-improvement |
| <EntityLink id="E2">Agentic AI</EntityLink> | Early stage | Enables autonomous action |
| <EntityLink id="E356">Tool Use</EntityLink> | Growing | Expands action space |
| <EntityLink id="E277">Scientific Research</EntityLink> | Emerging | Could accelerate capability growth |
| <EntityLink id="E282">Situational Awareness</EntityLink> | Emerging | Key prerequisite for <EntityLink id="E274">scheming</EntityLink> |
| <EntityLink id="E278">Self-improvement</EntityLink> | Theoretical | Could lead to recursive improvement |
| <EntityLink id="E224">Persuasion</EntityLink> | Concerning | Enables manipulation at scale |
| <EntityLink id="E192">Long-horizon Tasks</EntityLink> | Early stage | Enables complex autonomous projects |

## Relationship to Scenarios

Higher AI capabilities primarily increase the probability and severity of **AI Takeover** scenarios:

- **<EntityLink id="E623">Rapid Takeover</EntityLink>**: Requires sufficient capability for decisive action
- **<EntityLink id="E619">Gradual Takeover</EntityLink>**: Enabled by increasing autonomy and generality over time

Capabilities also affect <EntityLink id="E671">Human-Caused Catastrophe</EntityLink> scenarios by enabling more powerful <EntityLink id="E42">Bioweapons</EntityLink>, <EntityLink id="E86">Cyberweapons</EntityLink>, and <EntityLink id="E35">Autonomous Weapons</EntityLink>.

## Current Trajectory

AI capabilities are advancing rapidly across all dimensions, driven by:
- Scaling laws (more compute, data, parameters)
- Algorithmic improvements (transformers, <EntityLink id="E259">RLHF</EntityLink>, reasoning chains)
- Hardware advances (specialized AI chips, larger clusters)
- Increased investment (≈\$100B+ annually in US alone)

**Key metrics** are tracked at [Epoch AI](https://epochai.org/) and [Stanford HAI AI Index](https://aiindex.stanford.edu/).