A reoccurring theme in Egan’s fiction is that “all minds face the same fundamental computing bottlenecks”, serving to establish the non-existence of large-scale intrinsic cognitive disparities.
This still allows for AIs to be millions of times faster than humans, undergo rapid population explosion and reduced training/experimentation times through digital copying, be superhumanly coordinated, bring up the average ability in each field to peak levels (as seen in any existing animal or machine, with obvious flaws repaired), etc. We know that human science can produce decisive tech and capacity gaps, and growth rates can change enormously even using the same cognitive hardware (Industrial Revolution).
I just don’t see how even extreme confidence in the impossibility of qualitative superintelligence rules out an explosion of AI capabilities.
Agreed, thanks for bringing this up—I threw away what I had on the subject because I was having trouble expressing it clearly. Strangely, Egan occasionally depicts civilizations rendered inaccessible by sheer difference of computing speed, so he’s clearly aware of how much room is available at the bottom.
This still allows for AIs to be millions of times faster than humans, undergo rapid population explosion and reduced training/experimentation times through digital copying, be superhumanly coordinated, bring up the average ability in each field to peak levels (as seen in any existing animal or machine, with obvious flaws repaired), etc. We know that human science can produce decisive tech and capacity gaps, and growth rates can change enormously even using the same cognitive hardware (Industrial Revolution).
I just don’t see how even extreme confidence in the impossibility of qualitative superintelligence rules out an explosion of AI capabilities.
Agreed, thanks for bringing this up—I threw away what I had on the subject because I was having trouble expressing it clearly. Strangely, Egan occasionally depicts civilizations rendered inaccessible by sheer difference of computing speed, so he’s clearly aware of how much room is available at the bottom.