Ah, OK. Good point. I think when it accelerated previously, it was the result of a small number of technologies, so long as we are careful to define our technologies broadly enough. For example, we can say the acceleration due to the agricultural revolution was due to agriculture + a few other things maybe. And we can say the acceleration due to the industrial revolution was due to engines + international trade + mass-production methods + scientific institutions + capitalist institutions + a few other things I’m forgetting. I’m looking for something similar here; e.g. Abram’s answer “We automate everything, but without using AGI” is acceptable to me, even though it’s only a single technology if we define our tech extremely broadly.
the acceleration due to the agricultural revolution was due to agriculture + a few other things maybe
This linguistic trick only seems to work because you have a single word (“agriculture”) that describes most human work at that time. If you want the analogous level of description for “what is going to improve next?” just look up what people are doing in the modern economy. If you need more words to describe the modern economy, then I guess it’s going to be “more technologies” that are responsible this time (though in the future, when stuff we do today is a smaller part of the economy, they may describe it using a smaller number of words).
we can say the acceleration due to the industrial revolution was due to engines + international trade + mass-production methods + scientific institutions + capitalist institutions + a few other things I’m forgetting
If you are including lists that long then I guess the thing that’s going to change is “improved manufacturing + logistics + construction + retail + finance” or whatever, just sample all the stuff that humans do and then it gets improved.
(I think “a few other things” is actually quite a lot of other things, unless you construe “mass-production” super broadly.)
It’s fair to call what I did a linguistic trick, but that cuts both ways—it’s equally a linguistic trick to say that my original question assumed a small number of technologies. I did have possibilities like the one you mention in mind when I wrote the question, though in retrospect I didn’t make that clear. I think the possibility you raise is a good one, and similar to Abram’s.
Ah, OK. Good point. I think when it accelerated previously, it was the result of a small number of technologies, so long as we are careful to define our technologies broadly enough. For example, we can say the acceleration due to the agricultural revolution was due to agriculture + a few other things maybe. And we can say the acceleration due to the industrial revolution was due to engines + international trade + mass-production methods + scientific institutions + capitalist institutions + a few other things I’m forgetting. I’m looking for something similar here; e.g. Abram’s answer “We automate everything, but without using AGI” is acceptable to me, even though it’s only a single technology if we define our tech extremely broadly.
This linguistic trick only seems to work because you have a single word (“agriculture”) that describes most human work at that time. If you want the analogous level of description for “what is going to improve next?” just look up what people are doing in the modern economy. If you need more words to describe the modern economy, then I guess it’s going to be “more technologies” that are responsible this time (though in the future, when stuff we do today is a smaller part of the economy, they may describe it using a smaller number of words).
If you are including lists that long then I guess the thing that’s going to change is “improved manufacturing + logistics + construction + retail + finance” or whatever, just sample all the stuff that humans do and then it gets improved.
(I think “a few other things” is actually quite a lot of other things, unless you construe “mass-production” super broadly.)
It’s fair to call what I did a linguistic trick, but that cuts both ways—it’s equally a linguistic trick to say that my original question assumed a small number of technologies. I did have possibilities like the one you mention in mind when I wrote the question, though in retrospect I didn’t make that clear. I think the possibility you raise is a good one, and similar to Abram’s.