Again, today AI companies regularly go years without turning a profit—DeepMind, for example, has never turned a profit and is losing something like a billion dollars a year for its parent company—and I don’t see any particularly good reason to expect that to change much.
Not sure this makes sense. I’m just based this on my intuitions rather any detailed analysis, but if AI research was causing 10-100x faster economic growth than the Industrial Revolution, wouldn’t at least 10% of total economic output be going into AI research (maybe just building hardware to power ML) in which case I don’t see how a company, even Google, could afford to invest that much without trying to make some short term profits. It seems pretty plausible though that it could do this in a way that doesn’t leak its technology, e.g., by just selling AI services (with some controls for not using it to do AI research) rather than any hardware or software that people could copy.
Hmm, good point. So the idea is that faster GDP growth will put more pressure on companies (and governments?) to make lots of profit quickly or else go obsolete? Yeah that seems somewhat plausible… I’d like to see someone analyze this in more detail.
What if it’s not actual GDP growth though, but potential GDP growth? As in, innovations in AI technology leading to more and faster innovation in AI technology… but the wider economy as a whole not being affected that much initially, just as how the whole deep learning revolution of the past 5 years hasn’t really changed the economy much yet.
That seems possible if (1) AI progress depends more on insights rather than “compute/energy/data/other software” as Paul suggests and (2) leading AI projects are farsighted enough to forgo short-term profits. I’m unsure about (1) but (2) seems false at least.
It seems like a stronger argument for your position is that (as I suggested earlier) instead of companies not selling access to their AI innovations at all, they sell them in a way that doesn’t cause their innovations to leak out. This is how Google currently sells access to innovations in search engine algorithms, for example.
Hmm, OK. I like your point about making profits without giving away secrets.
And yeah I think you (and Paul’s comment below) is helping me to get the picture a bit better—because the economy is growing so fast, moonshot projects that don’t turn a profit for a while just won’t work because the people capable of affording them one year will be paupers by comparison to the people capable of funding AI research the next year (due to the general boom). And so while a tech-hoarding project will still technically have more insights than the economy as a whole, its lead will shrink as its relative funding shrinks.
Another way I think my scenario could happen, though, is if governments get involved. Because governments have the power to tax. Suppose we have a pool of insights that is publicly available, and from it we get this rapidly growing economy fueled by publicly available AI technologies. But then we have a government that taxes this entire economy and funnels the revenue into an AGI project that hoards all its insights. Won’t this AGI project have access to more insights than anyone else? If there is an intelligence explosion, won’t it happen first (and/or faster) inside the project than outside? We don’t have to worry about getting outcompeted by other parts of the economy, since those parts are getting taxed. The funding for our AGI project will rise in proportion to the growth in the AI sector of the economy, even though our AGI project is hoarding all its secrets.
Not sure this makes sense. I’m just based this on my intuitions rather any detailed analysis, but if AI research was causing 10-100x faster economic growth than the Industrial Revolution, wouldn’t at least 10% of total economic output be going into AI research (maybe just building hardware to power ML) in which case I don’t see how a company, even Google, could afford to invest that much without trying to make some short term profits. It seems pretty plausible though that it could do this in a way that doesn’t leak its technology, e.g., by just selling AI services (with some controls for not using it to do AI research) rather than any hardware or software that people could copy.
Hmm, good point. So the idea is that faster GDP growth will put more pressure on companies (and governments?) to make lots of profit quickly or else go obsolete? Yeah that seems somewhat plausible… I’d like to see someone analyze this in more detail.
What if it’s not actual GDP growth though, but potential GDP growth? As in, innovations in AI technology leading to more and faster innovation in AI technology… but the wider economy as a whole not being affected that much initially, just as how the whole deep learning revolution of the past 5 years hasn’t really changed the economy much yet.
That seems possible if (1) AI progress depends more on insights rather than “compute/energy/data/other software” as Paul suggests and (2) leading AI projects are farsighted enough to forgo short-term profits. I’m unsure about (1) but (2) seems false at least.
It seems like a stronger argument for your position is that (as I suggested earlier) instead of companies not selling access to their AI innovations at all, they sell them in a way that doesn’t cause their innovations to leak out. This is how Google currently sells access to innovations in search engine algorithms, for example.
Hmm, OK. I like your point about making profits without giving away secrets.
And yeah I think you (and Paul’s comment below) is helping me to get the picture a bit better—because the economy is growing so fast, moonshot projects that don’t turn a profit for a while just won’t work because the people capable of affording them one year will be paupers by comparison to the people capable of funding AI research the next year (due to the general boom). And so while a tech-hoarding project will still technically have more insights than the economy as a whole, its lead will shrink as its relative funding shrinks.
Another way I think my scenario could happen, though, is if governments get involved. Because governments have the power to tax. Suppose we have a pool of insights that is publicly available, and from it we get this rapidly growing economy fueled by publicly available AI technologies. But then we have a government that taxes this entire economy and funnels the revenue into an AGI project that hoards all its insights. Won’t this AGI project have access to more insights than anyone else? If there is an intelligence explosion, won’t it happen first (and/or faster) inside the project than outside? We don’t have to worry about getting outcompeted by other parts of the economy, since those parts are getting taxed. The funding for our AGI project will rise in proportion to the growth in the AI sector of the economy, even though our AGI project is hoarding all its secrets.