My Eliezer-model is a lot less surprised by lulls than my Paul-model (because we’re missing key insights for AGI, progress on insights is jumpy and hard to predict, the future is generally very unpredictable, etc.). I don’t know exactly how large of a lull or winter would start to surprise Eliezer (or how much that surprise would change if the lull is occurring two years from now, vs. ten years from now, for example).
I have a rough intuitive feeling that it [AI progress] was going faster in 2015-2017 than 2018-2020.
So in that sense Eliezer thinks we’re already in a slowdown to some degree (as of 2020), though I gather you’re talking about a much larger and more long-lasting slowdown.
I generally expect smoother progress, but predictions about lulls are probably dominated by Eliezer’s shorter timelines. Also lulls are generally easier than spurts, e.g. I think that if you just slow investment growth you get a lull and that’s not too unlikely (whereas part of why it’s hard to get a spurt is that investment rises to levels where you can’t rapidly grow it further).
Makes some sense, but Yudkowsky’s prediction that TAI will arrive before AI has large economic impact does forbid a lot of plateau scenarios. Given a plateau that’s sufficiently high and sufficiently long, AI will land in the market, I think. Even if regulatory hurdles are the bottleneck for a lot of things atm, eventually in some country AI will become important and the others will have to follow or fall behind.
My Eliezer-model is a lot less surprised by lulls than my Paul-model (because we’re missing key insights for AGI, progress on insights is jumpy and hard to predict, the future is generally very unpredictable, etc.). I don’t know exactly how large of a lull or winter would start to surprise Eliezer (or how much that surprise would change if the lull is occurring two years from now, vs. ten years from now, for example).
In Yudkowsky and Christiano Discuss “Takeoff Speeds”, Eliezer says:
So in that sense Eliezer thinks we’re already in a slowdown to some degree (as of 2020), though I gather you’re talking about a much larger and more long-lasting slowdown.
I generally expect smoother progress, but predictions about lulls are probably dominated by Eliezer’s shorter timelines. Also lulls are generally easier than spurts, e.g. I think that if you just slow investment growth you get a lull and that’s not too unlikely (whereas part of why it’s hard to get a spurt is that investment rises to levels where you can’t rapidly grow it further).
Makes some sense, but Yudkowsky’s prediction that TAI will arrive before AI has large economic impact does forbid a lot of plateau scenarios. Given a plateau that’s sufficiently high and sufficiently long, AI will land in the market, I think. Even if regulatory hurdles are the bottleneck for a lot of things atm, eventually in some country AI will become important and the others will have to follow or fall behind.