I didn’t ask how much, I asked what does it even mean. I think I understand the principles of Cotra’s report. What I don’t understand is why should we believe the “neural anchor” when (i) modern algorithms applied to a brain-sized ANN might not produce brain-performance and (ii) the compute cost of future algorithms might behave completely differently. (i.e. I don’t understand how Carl’s and Mark’s arguments in this thread protect the neural anchor from Yudkowsky’s criticism.)
(a) What is the meaning of “2020-FLOPS-equivalent that TAI needs?”
(b) Can you build TAI with 2020 algorithms without some truly astronomical amount of FLOPs?
(c) Why should we believe the “neural anchor?”
(a) is answered roughly in my linked post and in much more detail and rigor in Ajeya’s doc.
(b) depends on what you mean by truly astronomical; I think it would probably be doable for 10^35, Ajeya thinks 50% chance.
For (c), I actually don’t think we should put that much weight on the “neural anchor,” and I don’t think Ajeya’s framework requires that we do (although, it’s true, most of her anchors do center on this human-brain-sized ANN scenario which indeed I think we shouldn’t put so much weight on.) That said, I think it’s a reasonable anchor to use, even if it’s not where all of our weight should go. This post gives some of my intuitions about this. Of course Ajeya’s report says a lot more.
I didn’t ask how much, I asked what does it even mean. I think I understand the principles of Cotra’s report. What I don’t understand is why should we believe the “neural anchor” when (i) modern algorithms applied to a brain-sized ANN might not produce brain-performance and (ii) the compute cost of future algorithms might behave completely differently. (i.e. I don’t understand how Carl’s and Mark’s arguments in this thread protect the neural anchor from Yudkowsky’s criticism.)
These are three separate things:
(a) What is the meaning of “2020-FLOPS-equivalent that TAI needs?”
(b) Can you build TAI with 2020 algorithms without some truly astronomical amount of FLOPs?
(c) Why should we believe the “neural anchor?”
(a) is answered roughly in my linked post and in much more detail and rigor in Ajeya’s doc.
(b) depends on what you mean by truly astronomical; I think it would probably be doable for 10^35, Ajeya thinks 50% chance.
For (c), I actually don’t think we should put that much weight on the “neural anchor,” and I don’t think Ajeya’s framework requires that we do (although, it’s true, most of her anchors do center on this human-brain-sized ANN scenario which indeed I think we shouldn’t put so much weight on.) That said, I think it’s a reasonable anchor to use, even if it’s not where all of our weight should go. This post gives some of my intuitions about this. Of course Ajeya’s report says a lot more.