I think timelines are a useful input to what architecture takes off first. If the timelines are short, I expect AGI to look like something like DL/Transformers/etc. If timelines are longer there might be time for not-yet-invented architectures to take off first. There can be multiple routes to AGI, and “how fast do we go down each route” informs which one happens first.
Correlationally this seems true, but causally it’s “which architecture takes off first?” which influences timelines, not vice versa.
Though I could imagine a different argument which says that timeline until the current architecture takes off (assuming it’s not superseded by some other architecture) is a key causal input to “which architecture takes off first?”. That argument I’d probably buy.
I definitely endorse the argument you’d buy, but I also endorse a broader one. My claim is that there is information which goes into timelines which is not just downstream of which architecture I think gets there first.
For example, if you told me that humanity loses the ability to make chips “tomorrow until forever” my timeline gets a lot longer in a way that isn’t just downstream of which architecture I think is going to happen first. That then changes which architectures I think are going to get there first (strongly away from DL) primarily by making my estimated timeline long enough for capabilities folks to discover some theoretically-more-efficient but far-from-implementable-today architectures.
I think timelines are a useful input to what architecture takes off first. If the timelines are short, I expect AGI to look like something like DL/Transformers/etc. If timelines are longer there might be time for not-yet-invented architectures to take off first. There can be multiple routes to AGI, and “how fast do we go down each route” informs which one happens first.
Correlationally this seems true, but causally it’s “which architecture takes off first?” which influences timelines, not vice versa.
Though I could imagine a different argument which says that timeline until the current architecture takes off (assuming it’s not superseded by some other architecture) is a key causal input to “which architecture takes off first?”. That argument I’d probably buy.
I definitely endorse the argument you’d buy, but I also endorse a broader one. My claim is that there is information which goes into timelines which is not just downstream of which architecture I think gets there first.
For example, if you told me that humanity loses the ability to make chips “tomorrow until forever” my timeline gets a lot longer in a way that isn’t just downstream of which architecture I think is going to happen first. That then changes which architectures I think are going to get there first (strongly away from DL) primarily by making my estimated timeline long enough for capabilities folks to discover some theoretically-more-efficient but far-from-implementable-today architectures.