Sashinii t1_j7wg4nt wrote on February 9, 2023 at 9:57 PM

>A huge reason why this sub is uber-optimisitic is because many people on this sub use the singularity (something which isn't even a guarantee to happen ever, or at least not in their lifetime) as cope for their lives, lives that they are not very happy with. Many people here do not lead content lives, so they turn to AI and other technologies as the thing that's going to save them (which I find quite sad, to be honest).

I think the optimism largely comes from AI progress accelerating, and with strong enough AI, that'll enable the advent of other technologies which will be able to solve every problem.

>But of course, the singularity doesn't mean jack if it's not coming anytime soon, so that's why you see so many people claim that it's only a few years away, a decade at most, and those comments tend to get a lot of upvotes. On the other hand, comments that are more conservative get downvoted a lot (I wonder why?).

Arguments become weaker the more conservative they are because of exponential growth.

>And this uber-optimism is the case despite the fact that most AI experts don't think we'll have a singularity-like event for at least a few decades, if not longer. And that's not even taking into account social, economic, and political factors that are almost a guarantee to delay the arrival of the singularity.

A lot of experts changed their tune when it comes to their AI predictions in 2022 when it became clear that AI progress occurs faster than they thought. But even if they didn't, so what? Many experts have been wrong, not just regarding controlled flight (which is the most common example), but also regarding atoms, molecular nanotechnology, AI as good as it already is, etc.

I don't take what experts say as gospel; I care about the actual details, and if the evidence goes against what "experts" say, I won't dogmatically ignore reality.

The_Wizards_Tower t1_j7ws3f8 wrote on February 9, 2023 at 11:17 PM

I agree with your general sentiment about AI being the crucial technology here, but I think you're simplifying it a lot.

> Arguments become weaker the more conservative they are because of exponential growth.

Technology doesn't always advance exponentially. Most of the time it's actually pretty linear. It's the adoption rates that tend to be exponential. Look at cars. The step up from horse and buggy to an automobile was a MASSIVE singular jump in tech, and it was rapidly adopted by the majority of the world. But since then, cars have gotten better, faster, more fuel efficient, etc, but all that progress over the last hundred years has been slow and linear.

Moore's Law is actually very unusual in that almost no other technologies follow an exponential trend like that, especially not for as long as Moore's Law has held.

AI has been exponential over the last decade or so, mostly owing to scaling up parameters and data, but we've already hit realistic parameter limits and we're rapidly closing in on the limits of how much data exists for training. I have no doubt that these issues will be circumvented at some point, but there's no guarantee the exponential will continue to hold indefinitely.

TopicRepulsive7936 t1_j7x51j0 wrote on February 10, 2023 at 12:50 AM

>Moore's Law is actually very unusual in that almost no other technologies follow an exponential trend like that, especially not for as long as Moore's Law has held.

Not special to transistors, mechanical computers, relays and vacuum tubes exhibited these trends as well, all slightly accelerating from previous one.

To call the ability to process information a technology is I think slightly disrespectful as it underlays all applications of technology, it's the primus motor of everything.

The_Wizards_Tower t1_j7x80s3 wrote on February 10, 2023 at 1:12 AM

You’re right in that information/communications technologies as a whole have developed rapidly over the last century. This is part of Robert Gordon’s idea of an overall innovation slowdown (lots of progress in bits, very linear progress almost everywhere else).

I don’t buy his whole argument or his outlook for the future, I just wanted to dispute the idea that exponentials are a guaranteed and perpetually ongoing trend.