I agree that nobody was making a specific claim that there wouldn’t be any kind of AI driven R&D pre-fast-takeoff. But, I think if Eliezer et al hadn’t been at least implicitly imagining less of this, there would have been at least a bit less talking-past-each-other in the debates with Paul.
I claim the phrasing in your first comment (“significant AI presence”) and your second (“AI driven R&D”) are pretty different—from my perspective, the former doesn’t bear much on this argument, while the latter does. But I think little of the progress so far has resulted from AI-driven R&D?
There is a ton of current AI research that would be impossible without existing AI (mostly generating synthetic data to train models). It seems likely that almost all aspects of AI research (chip design, model design, data curation) will follow this trend.
Are there any specific areas in which you would predict “when AGI is achieved, the best results on topic X will have little-to-no influence from AI”?
Well the point of saying “significant AI presence” was “it will have mattered”. I think that includes AI driven R&D. (It also includes things like “are the first AIs plugged into systems they get a lot of opportunity to manipulate from an early stage” and “the first AI is in a more multipolar-ish scenario and doesn’t get decisive strategic advantage.”)
I agree we haven’t seen much AI driven R&D yet (although I think there’s been at least slight coding speedups from pre-o1 copilot, like 5% or 10%, and I think o1 is on track to be fairly significant, and I expect to start seeing more meaningful AI-driven R&D within a year or so).
[edit: Logan’s argument about synthetic data was compelling to me at least at first glance, although I don’t know a ton about it and can imagine learning more and changing my mind again]
I agree that nobody was making a specific claim that there wouldn’t be any kind of AI driven R&D pre-fast-takeoff. But, I think if Eliezer et al hadn’t been at least implicitly imagining less of this, there would have been at least a bit less talking-past-each-other in the debates with Paul.
I claim the phrasing in your first comment (“significant AI presence”) and your second (“AI driven R&D”) are pretty different—from my perspective, the former doesn’t bear much on this argument, while the latter does. But I think little of the progress so far has resulted from AI-driven R&D?
There is a ton of current AI research that would be impossible without existing AI (mostly generating synthetic data to train models). It seems likely that almost all aspects of AI research (chip design, model design, data curation) will follow this trend.
Are there any specific areas in which you would predict “when AGI is achieved, the best results on topic X will have little-to-no influence from AI”?
Well the point of saying “significant AI presence” was “it will have mattered”. I think that includes AI driven R&D. (It also includes things like “are the first AIs plugged into systems they get a lot of opportunity to manipulate from an early stage” and “the first AI is in a more multipolar-ish scenario and doesn’t get decisive strategic advantage.”)
I agree we haven’t seen much AI driven R&D yet (although I think there’s been at least slight coding speedups from pre-o1 copilot, like 5% or 10%, and I think o1 is on track to be fairly significant, and I expect to start seeing more meaningful AI-driven R&D within a year or so).
[edit: Logan’s argument about synthetic data was compelling to me at least at first glance, although I don’t know a ton about it and can imagine learning more and changing my mind again]