If you had told someone in 1990 or 2000 that there would be more smartphones and computers than humans in 2020, that probably would have sounded wild to them. The same could be true for AIs, i.e. that in 2050 there are more human-level AIs than humans. The fact that this sounds as ridiculous as ubiquitous smartphones sounded to the 1990/2000 person, might just mean that we are bad at predicting exponential growth and disruptive technology.
I just want to highlight this. I have an eye for this sort of thing, and I know how to spot the fact that this paragraph is the sort of thing that people should write onto a notecard and memorize, because it will inevitably come up in conversation. Most people who have a good understanding of the future of AI take a while to realize that they keep stumbling over the absurdity heuristic, and instead of thinking of workarounds, they keep blundering and eventually develop an aversion to talking about AI at all after some number of failed conversations.
Most people underestimate the difficulty in properly ordering words such that you can actually communicate what AI actually is worth. It needs to be done confidently and casually enough that you explain the concept to someone without triggering their memetic immune systems that ordinarily protect average people from getting Pascal-ed into someone else acquiring their resources. It’s not easy to quickly and confidently explain the future of AI to someone for the first time, and this paragraph does it better than most (and possibly all) of my many attempts at it.
I would strongly advise against circulating that paragraph, on the basis that it’s simply incorrect.
In 1990, Moore’s law had been going strong for 15 years, and PC’s were already hitting 20% market penetration in the UK, which doubled to 40% by 2000. The web was only released in 1990, but already hit 40% penetration in the north america by 2000. Anyone in 1990 that had heard of moore’s law would not be super suprised that small computers were everywhere in 30 years. Pretty much anyone in 2000 wouldn’t be surprised either, the growth of the internet and it’s uses were very obvious at the time.
Now, if you go back to 1980, that’s a different story, and I think they would find the ubiquity of small computers somewhat surprising. I think the overall point that the rise of PC’s was incredibly rapid is still reasonable, it just happened on a longer timescale (40 rather than 20 years) than the post makes out.
I’d love to see some hard evidence to resolve this dispute. I know various people in the 90′s did in fact predict the proliferation of small devices (Kurzweil, Strauss in Accelerando) but what did the average pundit think? What did the average tech industry employee think? Just because it should have been obvious doesn’t mean people actually thought it. IMO AGI will happen by 2030 and in retrospect people will say it should have been totally obvious in 2022.
I know your reasoning and I think it’s a plausible possibility. I’d be interested in how the disruption of AI into society looks like in your scenario.
Is it more like one or a few companies have AGIs but the rest of the world is still kinda normal or is it roughly like my story just 2x as fast?
I just want to highlight this. I have an eye for this sort of thing, and I know how to spot the fact that this paragraph is the sort of thing that people should write onto a notecard and memorize, because it will inevitably come up in conversation. Most people who have a good understanding of the future of AI take a while to realize that they keep stumbling over the absurdity heuristic, and instead of thinking of workarounds, they keep blundering and eventually develop an aversion to talking about AI at all after some number of failed conversations.
Most people underestimate the difficulty in properly ordering words such that you can actually communicate what AI actually is worth. It needs to be done confidently and casually enough that you explain the concept to someone without triggering their memetic immune systems that ordinarily protect average people from getting Pascal-ed into someone else acquiring their resources. It’s not easy to quickly and confidently explain the future of AI to someone for the first time, and this paragraph does it better than most (and possibly all) of my many attempts at it.
I would strongly advise against circulating that paragraph, on the basis that it’s simply incorrect.
In 1990, Moore’s law had been going strong for 15 years, and PC’s were already hitting 20% market penetration in the UK, which doubled to 40% by 2000. The web was only released in 1990, but already hit 40% penetration in the north america by 2000. Anyone in 1990 that had heard of moore’s law would not be super suprised that small computers were everywhere in 30 years. Pretty much anyone in 2000 wouldn’t be surprised either, the growth of the internet and it’s uses were very obvious at the time.
Now, if you go back to 1980, that’s a different story, and I think they would find the ubiquity of small computers somewhat surprising. I think the overall point that the rise of PC’s was incredibly rapid is still reasonable, it just happened on a longer timescale (40 rather than 20 years) than the post makes out.
I’d love to see some hard evidence to resolve this dispute. I know various people in the 90′s did in fact predict the proliferation of small devices (Kurzweil, Strauss in Accelerando) but what did the average pundit think? What did the average tech industry employee think? Just because it should have been obvious doesn’t mean people actually thought it. IMO AGI will happen by 2030 and in retrospect people will say it should have been totally obvious in 2022.
I know your reasoning and I think it’s a plausible possibility. I’d be interested in how the disruption of AI into society looks like in your scenario.
Is it more like one or a few companies have AGIs but the rest of the world is still kinda normal or is it roughly like my story just 2x as fast?
Thanks for pointing this out. I made a clarification in the text.
Similar to Daniel, I’d also be interested in what public opinion was at the time or what the consensus view among experts was if there was one.
Also, it seems like the timeframe for mobile phones is 1993 to 2020 if you can trust this statistic.
The timeframe for mobile phones is actually 1993 to 2013, mobile phone ownership went from 20% to 50% from 2010 to 2013.