We need brain-level hardware (within an order of magnitude or so) if machines are going to be cost-competitive with humans.
I don’t see why that is. If you were talking about ems, then the threshhold should be 1:1 realtime. Otherwise, for most problems that we know how to program a computer to do, the computer is much faster than humans even at existing speeds. Why do you expect that a computer that’s say, 3x slower than a human (well within an order of magnitude) would be cost-competitive with humans while one that’s 10^4 times slower wouldn’t?
Evidently there are domains where computers beat humans today—but if you look at what has to happen for machines to take the jobs of most human workers, they will need bigger and cheaper brains to do that. “Within an order of magnitude or so” seems like a reasonable ballpark figure to me. If you are looking for more details about why I think that, they are not available at this time.
I suspect that the controlling reason why you think that is that you assume it takes human-like hardware to accomplish human-like tasks, and greatly underestimate the advantages of a mind being designed rather than evolved.
I don’t see why that is. If you were talking about ems, then the threshhold should be 1:1 realtime. Otherwise, for most problems that we know how to program a computer to do, the computer is much faster than humans even at existing speeds. Why do you expect that a computer that’s say, 3x slower than a human (well within an order of magnitude) would be cost-competitive with humans while one that’s 10^4 times slower wouldn’t?
Evidently there are domains where computers beat humans today—but if you look at what has to happen for machines to take the jobs of most human workers, they will need bigger and cheaper brains to do that. “Within an order of magnitude or so” seems like a reasonable ballpark figure to me. If you are looking for more details about why I think that, they are not available at this time.
I suspect that the controlling reason why you think that is that you assume it takes human-like hardware to accomplish human-like tasks, and greatly underestimate the advantages of a mind being designed rather than evolved.