I suspect… the “science problems are getting harder” theory of the history of science has a lot more going for it than Eliezer wants to grant.
It’s interesting to glance at how much this differs by field. E.g. progress in physics, microprocessors, number theory, and some parts of biology seems much harder than it was in 1940 because so much low-hanging fruit has been scooped up, and one now has to study for a very long time to make advances on the current frontier. Progress in logic seems harder now than in 1940, but not incredibly so — there is still lots of low-hanging fruit. Progress in psychology might actually be easier today than it was in 1940, because we have better tools, and so few psychological phenomena have been studied with a good method and large-enough sample sizes. (But this doesn’t mean I expect progress in psychology to accelerate.) Progress in robotics is vastly easier today than it was in 1980 because sensors, actuators, and microprocessors are vastly cheaper. Progress in genomics is probably easier today than in 1980 due to rapidly falling sequencing costs, and falling computation costs for data storage and processing.
I think that it used to be fun to be a hardware architect. Anything that you invented would
be amazing, and the laws of physics were actively trying to help you succeed. Your friend
would say, “I wish that we could predict branches more accurately,” and you’d think,
“maybe we can leverage three bits of state per branch to implement a simple saturating
counter,” and you’d laugh and declare that such a stupid scheme would never work, but then
you’d test it and it would be 94% accurate, and the branches would wake up the next morning and read their newspapers and the headlines would say OUR WORLD HAS BEEN
SET ON FIRE. You’d give your buddy a high-five and go celebrate at the bar, and then you’d
think, “I wonder if we can make branch predictors even more accurate,” and the next day
you’d start XOR’ing the branch’s PC address with a shift register containing the branch’s
recent branching history, because in those days, you could XOR anything with anything
and get something useful, and you test the new branch predictor, and now you’re up to
96% accuracy, and the branches call you on the phone and say OK, WE GET IT, YOU DO
NOT LIKE BRANCHES, but the phone call goes to your voicemail because you’re too busy
driving the speed boats and wearing the monocles that you purchased after your
promotion
at work. You go to work hung-over, and you realize that, during a drunken conference call,
you told your boss that your processor has 32 registers when it only has 8, but then you realize
THAT YOU CAN TOTALLY LIE ABOUT THE NUMBER OF PHYSICAL REGISTERS,
and you invent a crazy hardware mapping scheme from virtual registers to physical ones,
and at this point, you start seducing the spouses of the compiler team, because it’s pretty
clear that compilers are a thing of the past, and the next generation of processors will run
English-level pseudocode directly. Of course, pride precedes the fall, and at some point,
you realize that to implement aggressive out-of-order execution, you need to fit more
transistors into the same die size, but then a material science guy pops out of a birthday cake and says YEAH WE CAN DO THAT, and by now, you’re
touring with Aerosmith and throwing Matisse paintings from
hotel room
windows, because when you order two
Matisse
paintings
from room
service and you get three, that equation
is going to be balanced. It all goes so well, and the party keeps
getting better. When you retire in 2003, your face is wrinkled
from all of the smiles, and even though you’ve been sued by several pedestrians who suddenly acquired rare paintings as hats,
you go out on top, the master of your domain. You look at your son
John, who just joined Intel, and you rest well at night,
knowing
that he can look forward to a pliant universe and an easy life.
Unfortunately for John, the branches made a pact with Satan
and quantum mechanics during a midnight screening of
“Weekend at Bernie’s II.”...
It’s interesting to glance at how much this differs by field. E.g. progress in physics, microprocessors, number theory, and some parts of biology seems much harder than it was in 1940 because so much low-hanging fruit has been scooped up, and one now has to study for a very long time to make advances on the current frontier. Progress in logic seems harder now than in 1940, but not incredibly so — there is still lots of low-hanging fruit. Progress in psychology might actually be easier today than it was in 1940, because we have better tools, and so few psychological phenomena have been studied with a good method and large-enough sample sizes. (But this doesn’t mean I expect progress in psychology to accelerate.) Progress in robotics is vastly easier today than it was in 1980 because sensors, actuators, and microprocessors are vastly cheaper. Progress in genomics is probably easier today than in 1980 due to rapidly falling sequencing costs, and falling computation costs for data storage and processing.
Also, I might as well mention the three cites on this topic from IE:EI and When Will AI Be Created: Davis (2012); Arbesman (2011); Jones (2009).
Obligatory link.