Karpathy himself has publicly stated that AGI itself is only possible with a new paradigm (that his group is working toward). He claims RHLF and attention models are near the end of their logarithmic curve. The concept of the "self-training AI" is likely impossible without a new kind of model.

We will likely see some classes of human skills completely taken over by LLMs this decade: call centers (already capable in 2026), SWE (the next couple years). Bear in mind the frontier labs have spend many billions on exhaustive training on every aspect of these domains. They are focusing training on the highest value occupations, but the long tail is huge.

It will be interesting to see if this investment will be obviated by a "real AGI" capable of learning without going through the capital-intensive training steps of current models.