How Fast Is Post-AGI Growth?

By Vasco Grilo🔸 @ 2026-09-03T16:04 (+13)

This is a linkpost to https://newsletter.forethought.org/p/how-fast-is-post-agi-growth

[Subtitle.] A podcast episode from Forethought

This is crosspost for How Fast Is Post-AGI Growth? by Fin Moorhouse, which was originally published on ForeWord on 5 July 2026. Relatedly, I liked the post AGI Will Set Off an Industrial Explosion by Damon Binder. I think Damon's analyses show an industrial explosion is possible, but say very little about its likelihood.

Damon Binder is a senior researcher on the Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness team at Coefficient Giving. He has a PhD in physics from Princeton and previously studied existential risks at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute.

He joined Fin Moorhouse to discuss his series on the AI industrial explosion. Topics include:

• How input-output tables let you estimate how fast a self-replicating economy could grow if labor were free, yielding a headline result of roughly annual doubling, even under conservative assumptions and heavy regulation
• Why competition makes low-growth restraint unstable
• Why raw-material scarcity isn’t a hard barrier
• Why a fast-growing economy wants cheap, disposable, infrastructure
• Thermodynamic speed limits to physical growth
• Which biological organisms replicate fastest, and what we can learn from them
• Why physical output matters for hard power
• How Damon uses AI in his research

Here’s a link to the full transcript.

ForeCast is Forethought’s interview podcast. You can see all our episodes here.