“Extrapolating the historic 10x fall in $/FLOP every 7.7 years for 372 years yields a 10^48x increase in the amount of compute that can be purchased for that much money (we recognize that this extrapolation goes past physical limits).”
If you are aware that this extrapolation goes past physical limits, why are you using it in your models? Why not use a model where compute plateaus after it reaches those physical limits? That seems more useful than a model that knowingly breaks the laws of physics.
In truth, I expect many respondents believe that the trajectory for such things is slowing down massively as we speak. [We do appear to have passed an inflection point toward slowing down]. There are good technological reasons for this belief, and we would need extremely advance technologies we have no current concept of to reach even a small fraction of that far. Now, that has always worked before, but it is quite understandable not to expect it to continue.
Believing extrapolations of trends have the status of law is very dangerous, but very tempting.
“Extrapolating the historic 10x fall in $/FLOP every 7.7 years for 372 years yields a 10^48x increase in the amount of compute that can be purchased for that much money (we recognize that this extrapolation goes past physical limits).”
If you are aware that this extrapolation goes past physical limits, why are you using it in your models? Why not use a model where compute plateaus after it reaches those physical limits? That seems more useful than a model that knowingly breaks the laws of physics.
In truth, I expect many respondents believe that the trajectory for such things is slowing down massively as we speak. [We do appear to have passed an inflection point toward slowing down]. There are good technological reasons for this belief, and we would need extremely advance technologies we have no current concept of to reach even a small fraction of that far. Now, that has always worked before, but it is quite understandable not to expect it to continue.
Believing extrapolations of trends have the status of law is very dangerous, but very tempting.