Please look up her resume. If that’s one of the people who are “much smarter than you”, you’re either very gullible or you don’t give yourself much credit.
She has a BS and and has essentially never worked in a technical role. Her primary role over a short work history seems to have been more focused on getting funding to study AI safety.
There’s nothing revelatory in that article it’s just breathless speculation.
She has a CS degree from one of the best CS departments in the country. Sure, she worked at Coefficient Giving directly after school, in a technical capacity as a research analyst initially. But more importantly, I've read her reports and saw her interviews. She comes across as extremely analytical, intelligent, and focused on where the data leads. If you actually read the history of what her and her fellow METR researchers were able to piece together with limited yet voluminous data and a very short time window, and then determine she is engaged in "breathless speculation" and pretend she doesn't have the data to back it up, you're full of shit.
What, you think it would have been more impressive if she coded up some bullshit social media gamification app?
I read the report you linked and it is purely speciation. If you’ve ever read any von misses, this report sounds exactly like his writing in that the important predictions of are entirely asserted rather than derived.
As for the background of the author. a BS, a few years as a “researcher” at a non-profit and absolutely zero peer reviewed publications reads more like the resume of a tech journalist than a serious researcher.