But the reason I mention this here is that a >5 year ‘median timeline’ to get to >30% GWP growth would not have required detailed justifications until very recently. Now, Matthew sees it as conservative, and he’s not wrong.
This seems crazy to me. Unless the machines get rid of the current economy and start from near-zero, I don’t think we’ll see >30% GWP growth at all, and certainly not right away.
From what I can find, extreme growth rates like this historically have had two causes: 1) recovery from a major disaster, usually war, or 2) discovery of a massive oil reserve in a poor country (e.g. Guyana recently). Less extreme but still high growth rates can occur do to mobilization during a war.
The oil case requires the surrounding world economy to already be much larger—outside investment is used to rapidly exploit the newly discovered resources, and then the oil is exported for cash, and presto, massive GDP growth. It’s not a good parallel to endogenous growth because it doesn’t require an internal feedback loop to build capacity. It also doesn’t translate in the short term to the rest of the economy: Guyana has a GDP per capita of $80k as money accumulates in the Natural Resource Fund, but half its population still lives on less than $5.50/day.
Recovery from disaster also seems like a poor analogy for automation, because it depends on infrastructure (both physical and social/corporate/human capital) that already existed but was forced to sit idle. We will need time to create that capital from scratch.
If someone deployed a superintelligent model tomorrow, do you think in 5 years we could quadruple our production of cars, houses, or airplanes? Would we have four times as many (or four times better) haircuts or restaurant meals? Real estate and leasing alone make up almost 14% of GDP and won’t see a boom until after household incomes go up substantially. Even if the AI created wonder drugs for every disease, how long would it take to get them into mass production?
I think we would get a massive surge of investment comparable to US mobilization in WWII, when real GDP nearly doubled in a six year period and growth exceeded 17% for three years running. But it might not even be that extreme. Production of consumer goods like automobiles, household appliances, and housing was severely curtailed or halted, and shortages/rationing became commonplace—growing pains that would be less tolerable without the pressure of an ongoing war. In the short term, we could probably 10x our production of software and Netflix shows, but it would be unlikely to show up as massive gains in the productivity numbers. See also the Productivity Paradox.
This seems crazy to me. Unless the machines get rid of the current economy and start from near-zero, I don’t think we’ll see >30% GWP growth at all, and certainly not right away.
From what I can find, extreme growth rates like this historically have had two causes: 1) recovery from a major disaster, usually war, or 2) discovery of a massive oil reserve in a poor country (e.g. Guyana recently). Less extreme but still high growth rates can occur do to mobilization during a war.
The oil case requires the surrounding world economy to already be much larger—outside investment is used to rapidly exploit the newly discovered resources, and then the oil is exported for cash, and presto, massive GDP growth. It’s not a good parallel to endogenous growth because it doesn’t require an internal feedback loop to build capacity. It also doesn’t translate in the short term to the rest of the economy: Guyana has a GDP per capita of $80k as money accumulates in the Natural Resource Fund, but half its population still lives on less than $5.50/day.
Recovery from disaster also seems like a poor analogy for automation, because it depends on infrastructure (both physical and social/corporate/human capital) that already existed but was forced to sit idle. We will need time to create that capital from scratch.
If someone deployed a superintelligent model tomorrow, do you think in 5 years we could quadruple our production of cars, houses, or airplanes? Would we have four times as many (or four times better) haircuts or restaurant meals? Real estate and leasing alone make up almost 14% of GDP and won’t see a boom until after household incomes go up substantially. Even if the AI created wonder drugs for every disease, how long would it take to get them into mass production?
I think we would get a massive surge of investment comparable to US mobilization in WWII, when real GDP nearly doubled in a six year period and growth exceeded 17% for three years running. But it might not even be that extreme. Production of consumer goods like automobiles, household appliances, and housing was severely curtailed or halted, and shortages/rationing became commonplace—growing pains that would be less tolerable without the pressure of an ongoing war. In the short term, we could probably 10x our production of software and Netflix shows, but it would be unlikely to show up as massive gains in the productivity numbers. See also the Productivity Paradox.