This is an expression from Eliezer’s Intelligence Explosion Microeconomics. In this context, we imagine an AI making some improvement to its own operation, and then k is the number of new improvements which it is able to find and implement. If k>1, then each improvement allows the AI to make more new improvements, and we imagine the quality of the system growing exponentially.
It’s intended as a simplified model, but I think it simplifies too far to be meaningful in practice. Even very weak systems can be built with “k > 1,” the interesting question will always be about timescales—how long does it take a system to make what kind of improvement?
This is an expression from Eliezer’s Intelligence Explosion Microeconomics. In this context, we imagine an AI making some improvement to its own operation, and then k is the number of new improvements which it is able to find and implement. If k>1, then each improvement allows the AI to make more new improvements, and we imagine the quality of the system growing exponentially.
It’s intended as a simplified model, but I think it simplifies too far to be meaningful in practice. Even very weak systems can be built with “k > 1,” the interesting question will always be about timescales—how long does it take a system to make what kind of improvement?