What Moravec says is merely that $1k human-level compute will become available in the ’2020s’, and offers several different trendline extrapolations: only the most aggressive puts us at cheap human-level compute in 2020/2021 (note the units on his graph are in decades). On the other extrapolations, we don’t hit cheap human-compute until the end of the decade. He also doesn’t commit to how long it takes to turn compute into powerful systems, it’s more of a pre-requisite: only once the compute is available can R&D really start, same way that DL didn’t start instantly in 2010 when various levels of compute/$ were hit. Seeds take time to sprout, to use his metaphor.
We already know how much compute we have, so we don’t need Moravec’s projections for this? If Yudkowsky described Moravec’s analysis correctly, then Moravec’s threshold was crossed in 2008. Or, by “other extrapolations” you mean other estimates of human brain compute? Cotra’s analysis is much more recent and IIUC she puts the “lifetime anchor” (a more conservative approach than Moravec’s) at about one order of magnitude above the biggest models currently used.
Now, the seeds take time to sprout, but according to Mark’s model this time is quite short. So, it seems like this line of reasoning produces a timeline significantly shorter than the Plattian 30 years.
As much as Moravec-1988 and Moravec-1998 sound like they should be basically the same people, a decade passed between them, and I’d like to note that Moravec may legit have been making an updated version of his wrong argument in 1998 compared to 1988 after he had a chance to watch 10 more years pass and make his earlier prediction look less likely.
I think this is uncharitable and most likely based on a misreading of Moravec. (And generally with gwern on this one.)
As far as I can tell, the source for your attribution of this “prediction” is:
If this rate of improvement were to continue into the next century, the 10 teraops required for a humanlike computer would be available in a $10 million supercomputer before 2010 and in a $1,000 personal computer by 2030.”
As far as I could tell it sounds from the surrounding text like his “prediction” for transformative impacts from AI was something like “between 2010 and 2030″ with broad error bars.
Adding to what Paul said: jacob_cannell points to this comment which claims that in Mind Children Moravec predicted human-level AGI in 2028.
Moravec, “Mind Children”, page 68: “Human equivalence in 40 years”. There he is actually talking about human-level intelligent machines arriving by 2028 - not just the hardware you would theoretically require to build one if you had the ten million dollars to spend on it.
I just went and skimmed Mind Children. He’s predicting human-equivalent computational power on a personal computer in 40 years. He seems to say that humans will within 50 years be surpassed in every important way by machines (page 70, below), but I haven’t found a more precise or short-term statement yet.
The robot who will work alongside us in half a century will have some interesting properties. Its reasoning abilities should be astonishingly better than a human’s—even today’s puny systems are much better in some areas. But its perceptual and motor abilities will probably be comparable to ours. Most interestingly, this artificial person will be highly changeable, both as an individual and from one of its generations to the next. But solitary, toiling robots, however competent, are only part of the story. Today, and for some decades into the future, the most effective computing machines work as tools in human hands. As the machinery grows in flexibility and initiative, this association between humans and machines will be more properly described as a partnership. In time, the relationship will become much more intimate, a symbiosis where the boundary between the “natural” and the “artificial” partner is no longer evident. This collaborative route is interesting for its powerful human consequences even if, as I believe, it will matter little in the long run whether or not humans are an intimate part of the evolving artificial intelligences.
Also, unimportant but cool: Check out his musing about the Fermi Paradox:
A frightening explanation is that the universe is prowled by stealthy wolves that prey on fledgling technological races. The only civilizations that survive long would be ones that avoid detection by staying very quiet. But wouldn’t the wolves be more technically advanced than their prey and if so what could they gain from their raids? Our autonomous-message idea suggests an odd answer The wolves may be simply helpless bits of data that, in the absence of civilizations, can only lie dormant in multimillion-year trips between galaxies or even inscribed on rocks. Only when a newly evolved, country bumpkin of a technological civilization stumbles and naively acts on one does its eons-old sophistication and ruthlessness, honed over the bodies of countless past victims, become apparent. Then it engineers a reproductive orgy that kills its host and propagates astronomical numbers of copies of itself into the universe, each capable only of waiting patiently for another victim to arise. It is a strategy already familiar to us on a small scale, for it is used by the viruses that plague biological organisms.
While this theory is not nearly as good as the theory I prefer (life is hard, aliens are rare) it strikes me as comparably plausible to the Dark Forest theory. I wonder why I hadn’t heard of it before.
actually, the premise of david brin’s existence is a close match to moravec’s paragraph (not a coincidence, i bet, given that david hung around similar circles).
What Moravec says is merely that $1k human-level compute will become available in the ’2020s’, and offers several different trendline extrapolations: only the most aggressive puts us at cheap human-level compute in 2020/2021 (note the units on his graph are in decades). On the other extrapolations, we don’t hit cheap human-compute until the end of the decade. He also doesn’t commit to how long it takes to turn compute into powerful systems, it’s more of a pre-requisite: only once the compute is available can R&D really start, same way that DL didn’t start instantly in 2010 when various levels of compute/$ were hit. Seeds take time to sprout, to use his metaphor.
We already know how much compute we have, so we don’t need Moravec’s projections for this? If Yudkowsky described Moravec’s analysis correctly, then Moravec’s threshold was crossed in 2008. Or, by “other extrapolations” you mean other estimates of human brain compute? Cotra’s analysis is much more recent and IIUC she puts the “lifetime anchor” (a more conservative approach than Moravec’s) at about one order of magnitude above the biggest models currently used.
Now, the seeds take time to sprout, but according to Mark’s model this time is quite short. So, it seems like this line of reasoning produces a timeline significantly shorter than the Plattian 30 years.
As much as Moravec-1988 and Moravec-1998 sound like they should be basically the same people, a decade passed between them, and I’d like to note that Moravec may legit have been making an updated version of his wrong argument in 1998 compared to 1988 after he had a chance to watch 10 more years pass and make his earlier prediction look less likely.
I think this is uncharitable and most likely based on a misreading of Moravec. (And generally with gwern on this one.)
As far as I can tell, the source for your attribution of this “prediction” is:
As far as I could tell it sounds from the surrounding text like his “prediction” for transformative impacts from AI was something like “between 2010 and 2030″ with broad error bars.
Adding to what Paul said: jacob_cannell points to this comment which claims that in Mind Children Moravec predicted human-level AGI in 2028.
I just went and skimmed Mind Children. He’s predicting human-equivalent computational power on a personal computer in 40 years. He seems to say that humans will within 50 years be surpassed in every important way by machines (page 70, below), but I haven’t found a more precise or short-term statement yet.
Also, unimportant but cool: Check out his musing about the Fermi Paradox:
While this theory is not nearly as good as the theory I prefer (life is hard, aliens are rare) it strikes me as comparably plausible to the Dark Forest theory. I wonder why I hadn’t heard of it before.
Those Fermi Paradox musings sound like the plot of A Fire Upon the Deep!
actually, the premise of david brin’s existence is a close match to moravec’s paragraph (not a coincidence, i bet, given that david hung around similar circles).