The actual claim is “For every choice of AGI difficulty, conditioning on gradual take-off implies shorter timelines.” I’m OK with that claim.
However, the title is [was—it was changed in response to this comment! :) ] “Gradual take-off implies shorter timelines”, and I think that’s very misleading.
Also, the claim towards the top is “All else being equal, gradual take-off implies shorter timelines.”, and I think that’s somewhat misleading.
I think we both agree that it’s perfectly consistent for Person A to expect FOOM next week, and it’s perfectly consistent for Person B to expect a gradual takeoff between 2150 and 2200. You would say “Person A thinks AGI is much easier than Person B”, so that’s not “all else being equal”.
But I would say: “all else being equal” is kinda a hard thing to think about, and maybe poorly defined in general. After all, any two scenarios wherein one is fast-takeoff and the other is slow-takeoff will differ in a great many ways. Which of those ways is an “else” that would violate the “all else being equal” assumption? For example, are we going to hold “total research effort” fixed, or are we going to hold “total human research effort” fixed, or are we going to hold “resource allocation decision criteria” fixed? Well maybe there’s a sensible way to answer that, or maybe not, but regardless, I think it’s not intuitive.
So I think “Holding AGI difficulty fixed…” is much better than “All else being equal…”, and much much better than the post title which omits that caveat altogether.
I don’t think the “actual claim” is necessarily true. You need more assumptions than a fixed difficulty of AGI, assumptions that I don’t think everyone would agree with. I walk through two examples in my comment: one that implies “Gradual take-off implies shorter timelines” and one that implies “Gradual take-off implies longer timelines.”
The actual claim is “For every choice of AGI difficulty, conditioning on gradual take-off implies shorter timelines.” I’m OK with that claim.
However, the title
is[was—it was changed in response to this comment! :) ] “Gradual take-off implies shorter timelines”, and I think that’s very misleading.Also, the claim towards the top is “All else being equal, gradual take-off implies shorter timelines.”, and I think that’s somewhat misleading.
I think we both agree that it’s perfectly consistent for Person A to expect FOOM next week, and it’s perfectly consistent for Person B to expect a gradual takeoff between 2150 and 2200. You would say “Person A thinks AGI is much easier than Person B”, so that’s not “all else being equal”.
But I would say: “all else being equal” is kinda a hard thing to think about, and maybe poorly defined in general. After all, any two scenarios wherein one is fast-takeoff and the other is slow-takeoff will differ in a great many ways. Which of those ways is an “else” that would violate the “all else being equal” assumption? For example, are we going to hold “total research effort” fixed, or are we going to hold “total human research effort” fixed, or are we going to hold “resource allocation decision criteria” fixed? Well maybe there’s a sensible way to answer that, or maybe not, but regardless, I think it’s not intuitive.
So I think “Holding AGI difficulty fixed…” is much better than “All else being equal…”, and much much better than the post title which omits that caveat altogether.
I don’t think the “actual claim” is necessarily true. You need more assumptions than a fixed difficulty of AGI, assumptions that I don’t think everyone would agree with. I walk through two examples in my comment: one that implies “Gradual take-off implies shorter timelines” and one that implies “Gradual take-off implies longer timelines.”
I agree and will edit my post. Thanks!