If the thesis is “There exists for every technological innovation in history some metric along which its performance is a smooth continuation of previous trends within some time window”, then yes, like I said, I agree at the object level, and my objection is at the meta level, namely that such an observation is worthless as there is basically no way to violate it. Disjunct over enough terms and the statement is bound to become true, but then it explains everything and therefore nothing.
Taking AGI as an example: Does slow takeoff fit the bill? Check. Scaling hypothesis implies AGI will become gradually more competent with more compute. Does hard takeoff fit the bill? Check. Recursive self-improvement implies there is a continuous chain of subagents bootstrapping from a seed AGI to superintelligence (even though it looks like Judgment Day from the outside).
If humanity survives a hard AI takeoff, I bet some future econblogger is going to draw a curve and say “Look! Each of these subagents is only a modest improvement over the last, there’s no discontinuity! Like every other technology, AI follows the same development pattern!”
If the thesis is “There exists for every technological innovation in history some metric along which its performance is a smooth continuation of previous trends within some time window”, then yes, like I said, I agree at the object level, and my objection is at the meta level, namely that such an observation is worthless as there is basically no way to violate it. Disjunct over enough terms and the statement is bound to become true, but then it explains everything and therefore nothing.
Taking AGI as an example: Does slow takeoff fit the bill? Check. Scaling hypothesis implies AGI will become gradually more competent with more compute. Does hard takeoff fit the bill? Check. Recursive self-improvement implies there is a continuous chain of subagents bootstrapping from a seed AGI to superintelligence (even though it looks like Judgment Day from the outside).
If humanity survives a hard AI takeoff, I bet some future econblogger is going to draw a curve and say “Look! Each of these subagents is only a modest improvement over the last, there’s no discontinuity! Like every other technology, AI follows the same development pattern!”