Summary of my response: at the point where humans are completely removed from a process, they will have been modestly improving output rather than acting as a sharp bottleneck that is suddenly removed.
Not very relevant to my whole worldview in the first place; also not a very good description of how horses got removed from automobiles, or how humans got removed from playing Go.
I’m not sure about horses, but Go doesn’t seem like a central example of human labor being automated. I definitely feel that the following examples have been more continuous (in the sense of human labor becoming gradually obsolete, rather than all-at-once),
Agriculture
Manufacturing
Travel agents
My guess is that it’s also been true for people doing manual calculations, language translation, and speech-to-text.
But also, your first graph covers a time period of 200 years whereas the third graph only covers 13; that’s not even the same order of magnitude. If you zoom in enough, any curve looks smooth, even an AI that FOOMs in mere hours.
Also, the original quote is stating something about sharp increases in output once the last human bottleneck is gone, not how gradual human elements are being removed.
I’m not sure about horses, but Go doesn’t seem like a central example of human labor being automated. I definitely feel that the following examples have been more continuous (in the sense of human labor becoming gradually obsolete, rather than all-at-once),
Agriculture
Manufacturing
Travel agents
My guess is that it’s also been true for people doing manual calculations, language translation, and speech-to-text.
Here’s a source on horse population in the US
But also, your first graph covers a time period of 200 years whereas the third graph only covers 13; that’s not even the same order of magnitude. If you zoom in enough, any curve looks smooth, even an AI that FOOMs in mere hours.
Also, the original quote is stating something about sharp increases in output once the last human bottleneck is gone, not how gradual human elements are being removed.