and obviously in some sense the underlying distribution is kinda smooth
I actually disagree that the output distribution has to be smooth, even assuming the inputs are smoothly increasing.
The reason for this is phase changes, and an example is when you heat up water from say 20 degrees Celsius to 100 degrees Celsius in increments of say 0.01 degrees per minute, and while it is true that increasing the heat by 0.01 Celsius per minute matters in and of itself, at 100 degrees Celsius, water heating behaves discontinuously and boiling starts to happen.
And the impact of AI is also likely to be a phase change, because of long-tail effects meaning that 99% automation of something is vastly less valuable than 100% automation of something.
More generally, even assuming the inputs are continously increasing, you cannot assume that downstream consequences/output will continuously increase.
This likely has important implications for how to think about AI.
I definitely buy this argument within industries, but not across the whole economy. Mathematically, you can have a kinda smooth distribution even if the underlying components are very jagged (cf Central Limit Theorem). Mechanically, this is because you should expect the tipping point of different jobs and industries to be at different points in the capabilities growth curve, so even if (eg) customer support agents go from losing 10% of jobs to losing 99% of jobs over night, you still shouldn’t expect the 10%-99% job loss transition to be at approximately the same time as other jobs.
There are a few ways this assumption breaks. The most obvious break is automated AI R&D/RSI. It’s easy to see how a smooth growth in AI capabilities there can potentially translate into a sharp increase in the pace of AI capabilities overall, which leads to ripple effects across the economy.
If I squint, I can also maybe buy a story here with superhuman non-AI R&D, where smooth increases in R&D ability of AIs nonetheless translates to non-smooth increases in scientific advancements and thus total factor productivity across the whole economy.
But I don’t think there are many things quite like that.
I actually disagree that the output distribution has to be smooth, even assuming the inputs are smoothly increasing.
The reason for this is phase changes, and an example is when you heat up water from say 20 degrees Celsius to 100 degrees Celsius in increments of say 0.01 degrees per minute, and while it is true that increasing the heat by 0.01 Celsius per minute matters in and of itself, at 100 degrees Celsius, water heating behaves discontinuously and boiling starts to happen.
And the impact of AI is also likely to be a phase change, because of long-tail effects meaning that 99% automation of something is vastly less valuable than 100% automation of something.
More generally, even assuming the inputs are continously increasing, you cannot assume that downstream consequences/output will continuously increase.
This likely has important implications for how to think about AI.
I definitely buy this argument within industries, but not across the whole economy. Mathematically, you can have a kinda smooth distribution even if the underlying components are very jagged (cf Central Limit Theorem). Mechanically, this is because you should expect the tipping point of different jobs and industries to be at different points in the capabilities growth curve, so even if (eg) customer support agents go from losing 10% of jobs to losing 99% of jobs over night, you still shouldn’t expect the 10%-99% job loss transition to be at approximately the same time as other jobs.
There are a few ways this assumption breaks. The most obvious break is automated AI R&D/RSI. It’s easy to see how a smooth growth in AI capabilities there can potentially translate into a sharp increase in the pace of AI capabilities overall, which leads to ripple effects across the economy.
If I squint, I can also maybe buy a story here with superhuman non-AI R&D, where smooth increases in R&D ability of AIs nonetheless translates to non-smooth increases in scientific advancements and thus total factor productivity across the whole economy.
But I don’t think there are many things quite like that.