4 ms·

I don't understand why people are so worried about superintelligence. Moore's law is dying. Computers are not going to get much faster, or much cheaper. Para

I don't understand why people are so worried about superintelligence. Moore's law is dying. Computers are not going to get much faster, or much cheaper. Parallelization is going to be the only way to get more powerful computers and there are real, possibly insurmountable, limits on how well you can do that. The computing sector is going to look like aerospace: the Boeing 737 of today is better in some ways, but it still looks almost exactly like the Boeing 737 of 50 years ago

etxm 7y ago
You can’t achieve parallelism.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
elcomet 7y ago
> Moore's law is dying. Computers are not going to get much faster, or much cheaper. Moore's law doesn't really matter. We're just at the beginning of computers, they will get much faster and powerful in the years - decades to come. I just read this for example: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/chip-carbon-nanotubes-not-silicon-marks-computing-milestone https://www.sciencenews.org/article/chip-carbon-nanotubes-no...
- goatlover 7y ago
  So computers are unlike any other technology?
  - scottlocklin 7y ago
    Yes, computers are the field computer people labor in, unlike any other technology. Whiggery is kind of the US/anglophone national religion. It's going to be amusing to watch people losing their minds as progress grinds to a halt. In fact, one might argue that is what is happening right now.
  - elcomet 7y ago
    What do you mean? I think they are like any other technology, we keep making improvements to them.
    - goatlover 7y ago
      But we don't make exponential improvements once the technology matures. The parent was either claiming that computers are different, or computing hardware won't mature for decades to come.
- luc4sdreyer 7y ago
  > they will get much faster and powerful in the years No one knows that, and we are extremely bad at predicting scientific and engineering breakthroughs. Yes, it's plausible that we'll have faster computers in the next 30 years. Twice as fast? A hundred times? A million times? No one knows. Although I agree with you answer, but for another reason: AGI doesn't have to look like a brain simulation, in the same sense that helicopters and rockets don't look like birds.
ansible 7y ago
Moore's Law is indeed dying. But consider this... The valuations of Intel, Nvidia, AMD and other chip makers are tied to Moore's Law, right? What's the point of buying a new GPU card, if your old one is good enough to play games? Their stock price depends on the continued belief that they can continue to produce something with some combination of better, faster and cheaper than what's currently available, and thereby have increasing sales. If Moore's Law comes to an end, their stock prices should crash, because then computing is a "boring" utility service, and doesn't warrant the massive R&D or stock valuations we have now. Ditto for the companies that depend on the chip makers: Apple, Samsung, Google, LG, Dell, etc. (yes, some of these make chips themselves) What's the point of buying a new PC that isn't faster than the old one? Or a new phone? They'd also be relegated to a maintenance mode as well, and their stock prices should also fall considerably, because future growth isn't there. And then there's all the companies that depend on those above. Game companies, etc. So now we're talking about billions and billions of dollars of investment. And are these shareholders of Intel and everyone going to be content with seeing valuations fall? No, I tell you they won't. If the current management of Intel can't promise new growth via new technology, they will be replaced by people who do promise it. If they can deliver on that promise is another story... So companies will be researching new a better computing substrates. And so the tech will move on. And get better, faster, denser, and more cost effective.
- mnemonicsloth 7y ago
  A lot of research has already been generated looking for better materials than silicon, asynchronous logic synthesis strategies, post-von Neumann architectures, methods for writing non-traditional, and especially parallel software. If any of them worked we'd be using them right now. They didn't. We aren't. And no amount of research is going to give us transistors less than 30 atoms on a side (we're around 100 now). There will be no chips that signal faster than the speed of light, which means no chip will be able to get bigger than a few centimeters across. Between those two constraints the design space is pretty much bounded.

etxm 7y ago

You can’t achieve parallelism.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

elcomet 7y ago

> Moore's law is dying. Computers are not going to get much faster, or much cheaper. Moore's law doesn't really matter. We're just at the beginning of computers, they will get much faster and powerful in the years - decades to come. I just read this for example: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/chip-carbon-nanotubes-not-silicon-marks-computing-milestone https://www.sciencenews.org/article/chip-carbon-nanotubes-no...

goatlover 7y ago
So computers are unlike any other technology?
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  Yes, computers are the field computer people labor in, unlike any other technology. Whiggery is kind of the US/anglophone national religion. It's going to be amusing to watch people losing their minds as progress grinds to a halt. In fact, one might argue that is what is happening right now.
- elcomet 7y ago
  What do you mean? I think they are like any other technology, we keep making improvements to them.
  - goatlover 7y ago
    But we don't make exponential improvements once the technology matures. The parent was either claiming that computers are different, or computing hardware won't mature for decades to come.
luc4sdreyer 7y ago
> they will get much faster and powerful in the years No one knows that, and we are extremely bad at predicting scientific and engineering breakthroughs. Yes, it's plausible that we'll have faster computers in the next 30 years. Twice as fast? A hundred times? A million times? No one knows. Although I agree with you answer, but for another reason: AGI doesn't have to look like a brain simulation, in the same sense that helicopters and rockets don't look like birds.

ansible 7y ago

Moore's Law is indeed dying. But consider this... The valuations of Intel, Nvidia, AMD and other chip makers are tied to Moore's Law, right? What's the point of buying a new GPU card, if your old one is good enough to play games? Their stock price depends on the continued belief that they can continue to produce something with some combination of better, faster and cheaper than what's currently available, and thereby have increasing sales. If Moore's Law comes to an end, their stock prices should crash, because then computing is a "boring" utility service, and doesn't warrant the massive R&D or stock valuations we have now. Ditto for the companies that depend on the chip makers: Apple, Samsung, Google, LG, Dell, etc. (yes, some of these make chips themselves) What's the point of buying a new PC that isn't faster than the old one? Or a new phone? They'd also be relegated to a maintenance mode as well, and their stock prices should also fall considerably, because future growth isn't there. And then there's all the companies that depend on those above. Game companies, etc. So now we're talking about billions and billions of dollars of investment. And are these shareholders of Intel and everyone going to be content with seeing valuations fall? No, I tell you they won't. If the current management of Intel can't promise new growth via new technology, they will be replaced by people who do promise it. If they can deliver on that promise is another story... So companies will be researching new a better computing substrates. And so the tech will move on. And get better, faster, denser, and more cost effective.

mnemonicsloth 7y ago
A lot of research has already been generated looking for better materials than silicon, asynchronous logic synthesis strategies, post-von Neumann architectures, methods for writing non-traditional, and especially parallel software. If any of them worked we'd be using them right now. They didn't. We aren't. And no amount of research is going to give us transistors less than 30 atoms on a side (we're around 100 now). There will be no chips that signal faster than the speed of light, which means no chip will be able to get bigger than a few centimeters across. Between those two constraints the design space is pretty much bounded.