4 ms·
Reasoning about whether we are close to solving something that is essentially a research problem is erroneous thinking to me. We could quite concievably be one
by throwaway22032 3y ago
Reasoning about whether we are close to solving something that is essentially a research problem is erroneous thinking to me.
We could quite concievably be one or two discoveries away from improving the scaling of our current models by 10-1000x. But I don't think there is a way of determining progress on that research. It's an unknown unknown.
- bbor 3y agoBut worth trying to guess! I think the only other project similar in character would be nuclear weapons, and I definitely think the world would’ve appreciated a heads up there. Just because it’s hard to predict doesn’t mean we shouldn’t reason about it and get some ballpark estimates, IMO
- throwaway22032 3y agoYes. I think on AI research in particular though, we could show that we're close, but not convincingly that we are far away. Not in the current world, anyway. With 1950s levels of compute, sure.