paulfchristiano comments on Superintelligence Reading Group - Section 1: Past Developments and Present Capabilities - Less Wrong

25 Post author: KatjaGrace 16 September 2014 01:00AM

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Comment author: mvp9 16 September 2014 02:15:07AM 4 points [-]

I find the whole idea of predicting AI-driven economic growth based on analysis of all of human history as a single set of data really unconvincing. It is one thing to extrapolate up-take patterns of a particular technology based on similar technologies in the past. But "true AI" is so broad, and, at least on many accounts, so transformative, that making such macro-predictions seems a fool's errand.

Comment author: paulfchristiano 16 September 2014 03:59:07AM 2 points [-]

Here is another way of looking at things:

  1. From the inside it looks like automating the process of automation could lead to explosive growth.
  2. Many simple endogenous growth models, if taken seriously, tend to predict explosive growth at finite time. (Including the simplest ones.)
  3. A straightforward extrapolation of historical growth suggests explosive growth in the 21st century (depending on whether you read the great stagnation as a permanent change or a temporary fluctuation).

You might object to any one of those lines of arguments on their own, but taken together the story seems compelling to me (at least if one wants to argue "We should take seriously the possibility of explosive growth.")

Comment author: mvp9 16 September 2014 05:13:05AM 3 points [-]

Oh, I completely agree with the prediction of explosive growth (or at least its strong likelihood), I just think (1) or something like it is a much better argument than 2 or 3.

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