I’d guess that experience curves do hit plateaus as you approach the limits of what’s possible with the current level of technology. Then you need R&D to get onto the next s-curve. If we’re combining experience curves with R&D into entirely new approaches, then i’d expect they only approach a plateau when we approach ultimate tech limits, or perhaps the ultimate limits of what humans are smart enough to ever design (like with the 10 year olds).
Agree the ratio can become extreme if humans hit a plateau but superintelligence doesn’t. But this looks like the same experience curve continuing for AIs and hitting a ceiling for humans. Whereas i thought you expected the experience curve for humans to keep going and the one for AIs to keep going at a permanently steeper rate.
I suppose if the reason for experience curves is that humans get exponentially less productive at improving tech when it becomes more complex, then maybe this exponential decay won’t apply as much to superintelligence and they could have a curve with a better slope… I think the normal understanding is that experience curves happen more because it takes exponentially more work to improve the tech when it becomes more complex—but this does seem plausible.
I like your examples about modern science vs historical trial and error. Feels like a case of massive meta-learning. Humans (through a lot of trial and error) learnt the scientific method. Then that method is way more sample efficient. Similarly, perhaps superintelligence will learn (from other areas) new ways of structuring tech development with similar gains. Then they could have massive ratios over humans, like 1:10,000. Then that either manifests as a truly massive one-time-gain (before going back to the same exp curve as humans!) as perhaps it comes in gradually and is looks more like a permanently steeper exp curve
Cool. So, I feel pretty confident that via some combination of different-slope experience curves and multiple one-time gains, ASI will be able make the industrial explosion go significantly faster than… well, how fast do you think it’ll go exactly? Your headline graph doesn’t have labels on the x-axis. It just says “Time.” Wanna try adding date labels?
Thanks—great points.
I’d guess that experience curves do hit plateaus as you approach the limits of what’s possible with the current level of technology. Then you need R&D to get onto the next s-curve. If we’re combining experience curves with R&D into entirely new approaches, then i’d expect they only approach a plateau when we approach ultimate tech limits, or perhaps the ultimate limits of what humans are smart enough to ever design (like with the 10 year olds).
Agree the ratio can become extreme if humans hit a plateau but superintelligence doesn’t. But this looks like the same experience curve continuing for AIs and hitting a ceiling for humans. Whereas i thought you expected the experience curve for humans to keep going and the one for AIs to keep going at a permanently steeper rate.
I suppose if the reason for experience curves is that humans get exponentially less productive at improving tech when it becomes more complex, then maybe this exponential decay won’t apply as much to superintelligence and they could have a curve with a better slope… I think the normal understanding is that experience curves happen more because it takes exponentially more work to improve the tech when it becomes more complex—but this does seem plausible.
I like your examples about modern science vs historical trial and error. Feels like a case of massive meta-learning. Humans (through a lot of trial and error) learnt the scientific method. Then that method is way more sample efficient. Similarly, perhaps superintelligence will learn (from other areas) new ways of structuring tech development with similar gains. Then they could have massive ratios over humans, like 1:10,000. Then that either manifests as a truly massive one-time-gain (before going back to the same exp curve as humans!) as perhaps it comes in gradually and is looks more like a permanently steeper exp curve
Cool. So, I feel pretty confident that via some combination of different-slope experience curves and multiple one-time gains, ASI will be able make the industrial explosion go significantly faster than… well, how fast do you think it’ll go exactly? Your headline graph doesn’t have labels on the x-axis. It just says “Time.” Wanna try adding date labels?