I don’t see the GAN example as evidence for continuous-but-quick takeoff.
When a metric suddenly becomes a target, fast progress can follow. But we already target the most important metrics (e.g. general intelligence). Face generation became a target in 2014 - and the number of papers on GANs quickly grew from a few to thousands per year. Compute budgets also jumped. There were low-hanging fruits for face-generation that people previously did not care about. I.e. we could have generated way better faces in 2014 than the one in the example if we had cared about it for some time.
It’s worth noting that I wasn’t using it as evidence “for” continuous takeoff. It was instead an example of something which experienced a continuous takeoff that nonetheless was quick relative to the lifespan of a human.
It’s hard to argue that it wasn’t continuous under my definition, since the papers got gradually and predictably better. Perhaps there was an initial discontinuity in 2014 when it first became a target? Regardless, I’m not arguing that this is a good model for AGI development.
I don’t see the GAN example as evidence for continuous-but-quick takeoff.
When a metric suddenly becomes a target, fast progress can follow. But we already target the most important metrics (e.g. general intelligence). Face generation became a target in 2014 - and the number of papers on GANs quickly grew from a few to thousands per year. Compute budgets also jumped. There were low-hanging fruits for face-generation that people previously did not care about. I.e. we could have generated way better faces in 2014 than the one in the example if we had cared about it for some time.
It’s worth noting that I wasn’t using it as evidence “for” continuous takeoff. It was instead an example of something which experienced a continuous takeoff that nonetheless was quick relative to the lifespan of a human.
It’s hard to argue that it wasn’t continuous under my definition, since the papers got gradually and predictably better. Perhaps there was an initial discontinuity in 2014 when it first became a target? Regardless, I’m not arguing that this is a good model for AGI development.
Yes—the part that I was doubting is that it provides evidence for relatively quick takeoff.