This also depends on what you mean by capability, correct? Today we have computers that are millions of times faster but only logarithmically more capable. No matter the topic you get diminishing returns with more capability.
Moreover, if you talk about the AI building ‘rubber hits the road’ real equipment to do things—real actual utility versus ability to think about things—the AI is up against things like hard limits to thermodynamics and heat dispersion and so on.
So while the actual real world results could be immense—swarms of robotic systems tearing down all the solid matter in our solar system—the machine is still very much bounded by what physics will permit, and so the graph is only vertical for a brief period of time. (the period between ‘technology marginally better than present day’ and ‘can tear down planets with the click of a button’)
Yes, its very oversimplified—in this case ‘capability’ just refers to whatever enables RSI, and we assume that it’s a single dimension. Of course, it isn’t, but we assume that the capability can be modelled this way as a very rough approximation.
Physical limits are another thing the model doesn’t cover—you’re right to point out that on the intelligence explosion/full RSI scenarios the graph goes vertical only for a time until some limit is hit
This also depends on what you mean by capability, correct? Today we have computers that are millions of times faster but only logarithmically more capable. No matter the topic you get diminishing returns with more capability.
Moreover, if you talk about the AI building ‘rubber hits the road’ real equipment to do things—real actual utility versus ability to think about things—the AI is up against things like hard limits to thermodynamics and heat dispersion and so on.
So while the actual real world results could be immense—swarms of robotic systems tearing down all the solid matter in our solar system—the machine is still very much bounded by what physics will permit, and so the graph is only vertical for a brief period of time. (the period between ‘technology marginally better than present day’ and ‘can tear down planets with the click of a button’)
Yes, its very oversimplified—in this case ‘capability’ just refers to whatever enables RSI, and we assume that it’s a single dimension. Of course, it isn’t, but we assume that the capability can be modelled this way as a very rough approximation.
Physical limits are another thing the model doesn’t cover—you’re right to point out that on the intelligence explosion/full RSI scenarios the graph goes vertical only for a time until some limit is hit