Your post reads, to me, as saying, “Better algorithms in AI may add new s-curves, but won’t jump all the way to infinity, they’ll level off after a while.”
The post is mostly not about either performance s-curves or market size s-curves. It’s about regulation imposing a pause on AI development, and whether this would cause catch-up growth if the pause is ended.
Stacked s-curves can look like a pause + catch-up growth, but they are a different mechanism.
I think I was thrown by the number of times I’ve read things about us already being in hardware overhang, which a pause would make larger but not necessarily different-in-kind. I don’t know if (or realistically, how much) larger overhangs lead to faster change when the obstacle holding us back goes away. But I would say in this proposed scenario that the underlying dynamics of how growth happens don’t seem like they should depend on whether the overhang comes from regulatory sources specifically.
The reason I got into the whole s-curve thing is largely because I was trying to say that overhangs are not some novel thing, but rather a part of the development path of technology and industry generally. In some sense, every technology we know is possible is in some form(s) of overhang, from the moment we meet any of the prerequisites for developing it, right up until we develop and implement it. We just don’t bother saying things like “Flying cars are in aluminum overhang.”
The post is mostly not about either performance s-curves or market size s-curves. It’s about regulation imposing a pause on AI development, and whether this would cause catch-up growth if the pause is ended.
Stacked s-curves can look like a pause + catch-up growth, but they are a different mechanism.
True, that was poor framing on my part.
I think I was thrown by the number of times I’ve read things about us already being in hardware overhang, which a pause would make larger but not necessarily different-in-kind. I don’t know if (or realistically, how much) larger overhangs lead to faster change when the obstacle holding us back goes away. But I would say in this proposed scenario that the underlying dynamics of how growth happens don’t seem like they should depend on whether the overhang comes from regulatory sources specifically.
The reason I got into the whole s-curve thing is largely because I was trying to say that overhangs are not some novel thing, but rather a part of the development path of technology and industry generally. In some sense, every technology we know is possible is in some form(s) of overhang, from the moment we meet any of the prerequisites for developing it, right up until we develop and implement it. We just don’t bother saying things like “Flying cars are in aluminum overhang.”