The Memo - 28/Feb/2025

1X NEO Gamma, GPT-4.5, Claude 3.7S, and much more!

To:      US Govt, major govts, Microsoft, Apple, NVIDIA, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, Citi, Tencent, IBM, & 10,000+ more recipients…
From:    Dr Alan D. Thompson <LifeArchitect.ai>
Sent:    28/Feb/2025
Subject: The Memo - AI that matters, as it happens, in plain English
AGI:     88% ➜ 90%
ASI:     0/50 (no expected movement until post-AGI)

Anthropic CEO (19/Feb/2025):
If someone dropped a new country into the world with 10 million people smarter than any human alive today, you'd ask the question: ‘What is their intent? What are they actually going to do in the world?’ Particularly if they are able to act autonomously...

This is our most significant edition in a while. The announcements in the last two weeks were extraordinary, with a record 10 additions to the AGI countdown this month.

Today’s launch of OpenAI's GPT-4.5 model (‘Our largest and best model for chat’) is notable. I've estimated the GPT-4.5 model size to be between 3T and 5.4T parameters, based on pricing (US$150 / 1M tokens output), benchmark performance, extrapolated training details, and other data. A complete analysis is provided in this edition.

Thank you for your ongoing support of The Memo. If you’ve yet to become a full subscriber, you can join the bestselling AI analysis as used by government and enterprise, for $1/day. I’ll be walking by your side as we journey through AGI and ASI…

Contents

1. The BIG Stuff (Vending-Bench, Claude 3.7S, Grok-3, GPT-4.5, ChatGPT 400M users, GPU shipments 2025, Model Spec, Figure Helix…)

2. The Interesting Stuff (RAND edu report, Google Co-Scientist, 27% CFOs, ChatGPT CAPTCHA, Neom $5B DC…)

3. Policy (Education pilot…)

4. Toys to Play With (GPT filters, PDF OCR, new Google tool, movies, ElevenReader…)

5. Flashback (Vernor Vinge…)

6. Next (Roundtable…)

The BIG Stuff

The Memo features in recent AI papers by Microsoft and Apple, has been discussed on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and a trusted source says it is used by top brass at the White House. Across over 100 editions, The Memo continues to be the #1 AI advisory, informing 10,000+ full subscribers including RAND, Google, and Meta AI.

Vending-Bench: AI outperforms humans in business and making money

Vending-Bench is a simulated environment created to test AI models’ ability to manage a vending machine business over long time horizons. The simulation evaluates how well AI can handle tasks such as inventory management, ordering, and pricing. These findings highlight challenges in ensuring AI reliability and coherence in extended scenarios, important for real-world applications.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet and o3-mini often outperform humans. However, variance is high, and failures are epic (they call the FBI).

Source.