Things like primary metals and chemical manufacturing typically already run 24⁄7, so I don’t think that AI instructed workers would increase output very much. Mining is also mostly 24⁄7, but there may be more room to increase output with better workers. o3 estimates light (finished goods) manufacturing runs about 100 hours per week, so there is room for more shifts and faster assembly lines, but you would need to redesign the products to be much less material consumptive in order to get a big increase in good production with the ~same amount of material going in, and this would require changing the equipment. But I do think that switching from making vehicles to making robots would be a large increase in the value produced. And you could argue with the massive increase in wealth that the price of goods will go way up. But I don’t think that’s what you are getting at with your Y-axis label of physical capabilities. I think there is a lot more room for productivity speedups on the repair and maintenance side. And this is important because when we switch to producing high value products like robots, that would mean we be producing many fewer new cars and appliances. I think we would produce robots to drive existing cars, rather than producing new self driving cars, because robots require so much less material. We may even produce domestic robots that wash dishes and clothes by “hand” for multiple houses given the shortage in clothes washers and dishwashers. This is because if wages for manual workers went up a lot worldwide, there would be tremendous demand for appliances. But one way of doing this for clothes is most people using a laundromat. There would also be a lot of demand for new buildings, but buildings are resource intensive, so we probably could not build that much more in just a few years. The steel would probably be diverted towards robot production, but we still could use wood and (unreinforced) concrete for buildings. Road building would probably also be reduced as steel reinforcement is needed for concrete roads. So overall, if we just try to produce more of the same things, at current prices, I think the 10x speedup just from AI-directed workers is not feasible. However, with the substitution with much higher value products like robots, I think it would be feasible.
By the way, it looks like your curve of growth is most similar to Hanson’s here (though presumably you think it will happen a lot sooner).
Things like primary metals and chemical manufacturing typically already run 24⁄7, so I don’t think that AI instructed workers would increase output very much. Mining is also mostly 24⁄7, but there may be more room to increase output with better workers. o3 estimates light (finished goods) manufacturing runs about 100 hours per week, so there is room for more shifts and faster assembly lines, but you would need to redesign the products to be much less material consumptive in order to get a big increase in good production with the ~same amount of material going in, and this would require changing the equipment. But I do think that switching from making vehicles to making robots would be a large increase in the value produced. And you could argue with the massive increase in wealth that the price of goods will go way up. But I don’t think that’s what you are getting at with your Y-axis label of physical capabilities. I think there is a lot more room for productivity speedups on the repair and maintenance side. And this is important because when we switch to producing high value products like robots, that would mean we be producing many fewer new cars and appliances. I think we would produce robots to drive existing cars, rather than producing new self driving cars, because robots require so much less material. We may even produce domestic robots that wash dishes and clothes by “hand” for multiple houses given the shortage in clothes washers and dishwashers. This is because if wages for manual workers went up a lot worldwide, there would be tremendous demand for appliances. But one way of doing this for clothes is most people using a laundromat. There would also be a lot of demand for new buildings, but buildings are resource intensive, so we probably could not build that much more in just a few years. The steel would probably be diverted towards robot production, but we still could use wood and (unreinforced) concrete for buildings. Road building would probably also be reduced as steel reinforcement is needed for concrete roads.
So overall, if we just try to produce more of the same things, at current prices, I think the 10x speedup just from AI-directed workers is not feasible. However, with the substitution with much higher value products like robots, I think it would be feasible.
By the way, it looks like your curve of growth is most similar to Hanson’s here (though presumably you think it will happen a lot sooner).
Thanks!