The return of 'YOLO': The 2010s meme is back and shaping the AI industry

• "YOLO" is making a comeback. This time, it's shaping the AI industry.
• The term has been used to describe huge investments and fast-moving AI development.
• That YOLO culture presents a risk for a technology that can have far-reaching implications.

The term "YOLO" was cool once, made so in 2011 by Drake in his hit song, "The Motto." Then it slipped into the domain of the unhip and out-of-touch.

Well, it's now back.

This time, it's being used by the AI vanguard to describe the state of the industry, which is a tad worrying to those concerned about AI's far-reaching implications for the world.

Last week, at The New York Times DealBook Summit, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei took a dig at his competitors, like OpenAI and Meta, when he said, "There are some players who are YOLO-ing, who pull the risk dial too far, and I'm very concerned." In other words, their approach to developing AI models is more reckless than rigorous.

Anthropic, he said, is trying to manage its growth as "responsibly as we can."

The term is being used by AI researchers, too.

Jason Wei, a researcher at Meta, wrote on X that one of the great skills he's seen is "yolo runs" — a sort of instinctive flow state where a researcher or developer throws caution to the wind.

In a "yolo run," he said, a researcher "directly implements an ambitious new model without extensively de-risking individual components. The researcher doing the yolo run relies primarily on intuition to set hyperparameter values, decide what parts of the model matter, and anticipate potential problems. These choices are non-obvious to everyone else on the team."

This approach contrasts with the traditional research approach to carefully change one thing at a time, he added.

During a discussion at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center, which seeks to understand the impacts of technology, Harvard professor Jonathan Zittrain used the term to describe the AI industry's current approach.

Zittrain said the "YOLO model" is driven by founders and VCs who will try anything quickly: Launch an idea, see if it sticks, and if the company collapses, just move on to the next startup. If it succeeds, he said, they cash in.

The resurgence of the term highlights a growing tension between the AI industry's full-throttle race to build ever-larger and smarter models and the more safety-minded voices urging caution.

On the one hand, competition is fierce in the AI industry, with tech giants issuing "code reds" to their teams every time a competitor launches a successful new model. And the money is flowing. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft all logged record-breaking capital expenditures on AI chips, servers, and data centers this quarter. The scale of AI spending pushed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to record highs in recent weeks.

At the same time, others warn this sort of YOLO culture ignores AI's potential threats — anything from misuse by bad actors to unintended AI model behavior.

AI "godfather" Geoffrey Hinton said in a conversation with Sen. Bernie Sanders at Georgetown University last month that the rapid development of AI could spark mass unemployment, deepen inequality, and even change the nature of human relationships.

An analysis conducted by AlphaSense found that 418 publicly traded companies valued at more than $1 billion have cited AI as a risk to their reputations and security in reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Many companies have also been slow to implement AI ethics officers and governance experts in their rush to make productivity gains.

As the "YOLO" mindset takes root in the AI industry, Zittrain asked: "Is that an OK model of development for this possibly transformative tech?"