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> It's not clear that the transition from low quality to high quality full self driving will be linear. Most claims around anecdotes come with an unspoken assum

> It's not clear that the transition from low quality to high quality full self driving will be linear. Most claims around anecdotes come with an unspoken assumption we ought to see steady improvement over time vs a step-function like behavior. The latter seems somewhat possible given the nature of how improvements in AI systems seem to happen. That is true, but it's actually an argument _against_ the assumption of full self-driving capability being just around the corner. Because that assumption itself is based solely on observed recent progress, which - as you correcly state - can be very misleading when used as a means to extrapolate the future due to the tendency of the AI field to have long stretches of very little to nearly no progress at all, divided by huge leaps followed by stretches of very fast progress in specific sub-areas of the field. We clearly have seen such a stretch recently, triggered by the deep learning idea and enabled by an explosion in parallel computing capability over the course of the last decade.

gfodor 6y ago
I'm not claiming it will be linear or will not be linear. I'm saying it's a bad idea to assume either when trying to predict the future.
- Slartie 6y ago
  The problem is: you have to assume "something", because otherwise you simply can't make any predictions. Either assume progress is linear (which seems to be the instinctive default most people use if they don't know much about a particular field) or assume it's non-linear. In case of the latter, you can choose between assuming exponential progress to apply or a step-wise, non-continuous kind of progress. It's a bad idea to not assume one of these to be the case if you want to make a prediction, because it's not possible to predict anything without that assumption. I mean, you can of course refrain from making any predictions. But I have never met a single person who could resist the instinctive urge to extrapolate current developments into the future. It is as much a core part of being human to do this as it is to breathe air.
  - gfodor 6y ago
    It's the assumption of linearity in combination with anecdotes that make the prediction weak, not the assumption itself. If you hold that assumption and use a variety of data to justify it and extrapolate from that's different than what I was criticizing.

gfodor 6y ago

I'm not claiming it will be linear or will not be linear. I'm saying it's a bad idea to assume either when trying to predict the future.

Slartie 6y ago
The problem is: you have to assume "something", because otherwise you simply can't make any predictions. Either assume progress is linear (which seems to be the instinctive default most people use if they don't know much about a particular field) or assume it's non-linear. In case of the latter, you can choose between assuming exponential progress to apply or a step-wise, non-continuous kind of progress. It's a bad idea to not assume one of these to be the case if you want to make a prediction, because it's not possible to predict anything without that assumption. I mean, you can of course refrain from making any predictions. But I have never met a single person who could resist the instinctive urge to extrapolate current developments into the future. It is as much a core part of being human to do this as it is to breathe air.
- gfodor 6y ago
  It's the assumption of linearity in combination with anecdotes that make the prediction weak, not the assumption itself. If you hold that assumption and use a variety of data to justify it and extrapolate from that's different than what I was criticizing.