I agree that there s an issue with small sample size. But other than two software improvements that weren’t that big a change when they were introduced, but modified the slope so became bigger and bigger deals as hardware/money scaled up, none of the other software improvements have been that large. That suggests that if hardware and financial scaling goes away, and you’re left with only software scaling, or if you’re mid-FOOM and hardware and financial improvements are slow to accelerate but software in in a feedback loop, software improvements by themselves (in the absence of financial and hardware changes) are likely to be more of an intelligence damp squib than an intelligence explosion.
Another related issue is that there has bee suspicion that algorithmic improvements should eventually show diminishing returns. If you remove the two that produced very large improvements primarily by changing the slope for the other two variables, then you could squint at all the other software improvements and claim we were already somewhere into diminishing returns.
Disclaimer: I am not an expert in this area, and I would really like to see a reanalysis of this done by some people who are, such as the 2027 folks, in light of this observation. As a non-expert, my best guess is that this will make quite a big difference to the whole recursive-self-improvement step in timelines: it looks like it makes getting big effects off purely algorithmic improvements harder.
I agree that there s an issue with small sample size. But other than two software improvements that weren’t that big a change when they were introduced, but modified the slope so became bigger and bigger deals as hardware/money scaled up, none of the other software improvements have been that large. That suggests that if hardware and financial scaling goes away, and you’re left with only software scaling, or if you’re mid-FOOM and hardware and financial improvements are slow to accelerate but software in in a feedback loop, software improvements by themselves (in the absence of financial and hardware changes) are likely to be more of an intelligence damp squib than an intelligence explosion.
Another related issue is that there has bee suspicion that algorithmic improvements should eventually show diminishing returns. If you remove the two that produced very large improvements primarily by changing the slope for the other two variables, then you could squint at all the other software improvements and claim we were already somewhere into diminishing returns.
Disclaimer: I am not an expert in this area, and I would really like to see a reanalysis of this done by some people who are, such as the 2027 folks, in light of this observation. As a non-expert, my best guess is that this will make quite a big difference to the whole recursive-self-improvement step in timelines: it looks like it makes getting big effects off purely algorithmic improvements harder.