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Cryptizard t1_iyerlq1 wrote

Reply to comment by homezlice in What’s gonna happen to the subreddit after the singularity? by Particular_Leader_16

>There are so many teams working with so many technologies it would be impossible to say with certainty when the next breakthrough will happen.

I don't see how that is different from any time in the last 100 years though. Nobody predicted the lightbulb before it happened. Or the telephone. Or, like, anything big that was invented. It only seems different because you are living now and you weren't living then.

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homezlice t1_iyeu8j5 wrote

There were actually 23 patents for the light bulb that Edison bought up before he developed the carbon filament. So lots of people were working on it

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Cryptizard t1_iyeyfam wrote

Just like lots of people are working on AI.

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homezlice t1_iyf47md wrote

yep, exactly - but my point is, for instance, everyone thinks that AGI is a few years off...maybe a decade. But maybe it's actually 4 months off. It wouldn't surprise me. Same thing with neural linkage to human brains - maybe someone is working on some nanotech that changes the game within a year or two. Or maybe some other tech is about to be unleashed that will make all this irrelevant.

Electric light is actually a great example of people working for many years to make something happen at a pretty slow pace (also, you needed AC power networks to make it practical for use in home in biz). But the number of folks working on it, based on patents anyhow, was somewhere in the hundreds or thousands. With AI we have hundreds of thousands of folks worldwide working with neural networks, and the lid is just starting to blow off.

back to my original point - we're already in the rapid change, and it will go on likely for as long as people are still around

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