I notice that in your post you don’t propose an alternative metric to GDP, which is fair enough since most of your arguments seem to lead to the conclusion that it’s almost impossibly difficult to predict in advance what level of advantage over the rest of the world in which areas are actually needed to conquer the world, since we seem to be able to analogize persuasion tools to or conquistador-analogues who had relatively small tech advantages, to the AGI situation.
I wouldn’t go that far. The reason I didn’t propose an alternative metric to GDP was that I didn’t have a great one in mind and the post was plenty long enough already. I agree that it’s not obvious a good metric exists, but I’m optimistic that we can at least make progress by thinking more. For example, we could start by enumerating different kinds of skills (and combos of skills) that could potentially lead to a PONR if some faction or AIs generally had enough of them relative to everyone else. (I sorta start such a list in the post). Next, we separately consider each skill and come up with a metric for it.
I’m not sure I understand your proposed methodology fully. Are you proposing we do something like Roodman’s model to forecast TAI and then adjust downwards based on how we think PONR could come sooner? I think unfortunately that GWP growth can’t be forecast that accurately, since it depends on AI capabilities increases.
I wouldn’t go that far. The reason I didn’t propose an alternative metric to GDP was that I didn’t have a great one in mind and the post was plenty long enough already. I agree that it’s not obvious a good metric exists, but I’m optimistic that we can at least make progress by thinking more. For example, we could start by enumerating different kinds of skills (and combos of skills) that could potentially lead to a PONR if some faction or AIs generally had enough of them relative to everyone else. (I sorta start such a list in the post). Next, we separately consider each skill and come up with a metric for it.
I’m not sure I understand your proposed methodology fully. Are you proposing we do something like Roodman’s model to forecast TAI and then adjust downwards based on how we think PONR could come sooner? I think unfortunately that GWP growth can’t be forecast that accurately, since it depends on AI capabilities increases.