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> Vernor...said something much more interesting: that as the speed of innovation itself sped up (the derivative of acceleration) the curve could bend up until i

> Vernor...said something much more interesting: that as the speed of innovation itself sped up (the derivative of acceleration) the curve could bend up until it became essentially vertical, literally a singularity in the curve. In other words, Vernor described an exponential curve. But are there any exponential curves in reality? AFAIK they always hit resource limits where growth stops. That is, anything that looks like an exponential curve eventually becomes an S-shaped curve.

mjcohen 3y ago
An exponential curve is not a singularity; 1/(x-a) is as x goes to a.
dekhn 3y ago
To the extent that a normal human mind can see beyond the singularity, one imagines that we would experience an exponential growth but not even be able to comprehend the later flattening of that exponential into a sigmoid (since nearly all the exponentials we see are sigmoids in disguise.
- simiones 3y ago
  This is not about "beyond the singularity", the point is that there is no reason to believe technological progress could approach a singularity. It's silly extrapolation of the same nature as "I've lost 1kg dieting this week, so by this time next year I'll be 52kg lighter!".
shagie 3y ago
I tried using AI. It scared me. - Tom Scott https://youtu.be/jPhJbKBuNnA https://youtu.be/jPhJbKBuNnA I'm also gonna recommend Accelerando - https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/acceler... As an aside, I'd also recommend Glasshouse (also by Charles Stross) as an exploration into the human remnants post singularity (and war)... followed by Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams... > “I and my confederates,” Aristide said, “did our best to prevent that degree of autonomy among artificial intelligences. We made the decision to turn away from the Vingean Singularity before most people even knew what it was. But—” He made a gesture with his hands as if dropping a ball. “—I claim no more than the average share of wisdom. We could have made mistakes.” for a singularity averted approach of what could be done. One more I'll toss in, is The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts which feels like you're missing a lot of the story (but it is because that's one book of a series) and... well... spoilers.
- wavemode 3y ago
  You've linked to a collection of writers panicking about technology they hardly understand, and are using that as evidence of... what, exactly?
  - shagie 3y ago
    I've linked a Tom Scott video that gets into the sigmoid curve for advancement of technology and asks the question where we are on the curve. Are we near the end where things will peter out and we'll have some neat tools but not too far from now? Are we in the middle where things will get some Really Neat tools and somethings are going to change for those who use those tools? Or are we at the start where it's really hard to predict what it will be like when we're at the top of the curve? His example was the internet boom. Look back to the very toe of the curve in the late 80s and early 90s where the internet started being a thing that was accessible and not just a way for colleges to send email to each other. Could you predict what it would be like two or three decades later? The other works are science fiction that explore the Vingean Singularity (which was from '84) that were written in the '00s and explore (not panic) the ideas around society and economy during the time of accelerating technical growth and after.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
dwaltrip 3y ago
Sure, that may be. But you still have to ride the first half of the curve, before it inflects. I'd rather make sure the ride isn't too bumpy.
hnfong 3y ago
I totally agree, but want to add two observations: 1. Humanity has already been on the path of exponential growth. Take GDP for example. We measure GDP growth by percentages, and that's exponential. (Of course, real GDP growth has stagnated for a bit, but at least for the past ~3 centuries it has been generally exponential AFAIK). Not saying it can be sustained, just that we've been quite exponential for a while. 2. Not every function is linear. Sometimes the exponentially increased inputs will produce a linear output. I'd argue R&D is kind of like that. When the lower hanging fruits are already taken, you'd need to expend even more effort into achieving the next breakthrough. So despite the "exponential" increase in productivity, the result could feel very linear. I would also like to add that physical and computational limits make the whole singularity thing literally impossible. 3D space means that even theoretically sound speedups (eg. binary trees) are impossible in scale because you can't assume O(1) lookups - the best you can get is O(n^1/3). Maybe people understand the singularity concept poetically, I don't know.
skybrian 3y ago
I agree, but predicting the peak of an S curve isn’t easy either, as we saw during the pandemic. My conclusion is similar to Verge’s: predicting the far future is impossible. We can imagine a variety of scenarios, but you shouldn’t place much faith in them. Predicting even a couple years in advance looks pretty hard. Consider the next presidential election: the most boring scenario is Biden vs. Trump and Biden wins. Wildcard scenarios: either one of them, or both, dies before election day. Who can rule that out? Also consider that in any given year, there could be another pandemic. History is largely a sequence of surprise events.

mjcohen 3y ago

An exponential curve is not a singularity; 1/(x-a) is as x goes to a.

dekhn 3y ago

To the extent that a normal human mind can see beyond the singularity, one imagines that we would experience an exponential growth but not even be able to comprehend the later flattening of that exponential into a sigmoid (since nearly all the exponentials we see are sigmoids in disguise.

simiones 3y ago
This is not about "beyond the singularity", the point is that there is no reason to believe technological progress could approach a singularity. It's silly extrapolation of the same nature as "I've lost 1kg dieting this week, so by this time next year I'll be 52kg lighter!".

shagie 3y ago

I tried using AI. It scared me. - Tom Scott https://youtu.be/jPhJbKBuNnA https://youtu.be/jPhJbKBuNnA I'm also gonna recommend Accelerando - https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/acceler... As an aside, I'd also recommend Glasshouse (also by Charles Stross) as an exploration into the human remnants post singularity (and war)... followed by Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams... > “I and my confederates,” Aristide said, “did our best to prevent that degree of autonomy among artificial intelligences. We made the decision to turn away from the Vingean Singularity before most people even knew what it was. But—” He made a gesture with his hands as if dropping a ball. “—I claim no more than the average share of wisdom. We could have made mistakes.” for a singularity averted approach of what could be done. One more I'll toss in, is The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts which feels like you're missing a lot of the story (but it is because that's one book of a series) and... well... spoilers.

wavemode 3y ago
You've linked to a collection of writers panicking about technology they hardly understand, and are using that as evidence of... what, exactly?
- shagie 3y ago
  I've linked a Tom Scott video that gets into the sigmoid curve for advancement of technology and asks the question where we are on the curve. Are we near the end where things will peter out and we'll have some neat tools but not too far from now? Are we in the middle where things will get some Really Neat tools and somethings are going to change for those who use those tools? Or are we at the start where it's really hard to predict what it will be like when we're at the top of the curve? His example was the internet boom. Look back to the very toe of the curve in the late 80s and early 90s where the internet started being a thing that was accessible and not just a way for colleges to send email to each other. Could you predict what it would be like two or three decades later? The other works are science fiction that explore the Vingean Singularity (which was from '84) that were written in the '00s and explore (not panic) the ideas around society and economy during the time of accelerating technical growth and after.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

dwaltrip 3y ago

Sure, that may be. But you still have to ride the first half of the curve, before it inflects. I'd rather make sure the ride isn't too bumpy.

hnfong 3y ago

I totally agree, but want to add two observations: 1. Humanity has already been on the path of exponential growth. Take GDP for example. We measure GDP growth by percentages, and that's exponential. (Of course, real GDP growth has stagnated for a bit, but at least for the past ~3 centuries it has been generally exponential AFAIK). Not saying it can be sustained, just that we've been quite exponential for a while. 2. Not every function is linear. Sometimes the exponentially increased inputs will produce a linear output. I'd argue R&D is kind of like that. When the lower hanging fruits are already taken, you'd need to expend even more effort into achieving the next breakthrough. So despite the "exponential" increase in productivity, the result could feel very linear. I would also like to add that physical and computational limits make the whole singularity thing literally impossible. 3D space means that even theoretically sound speedups (eg. binary trees) are impossible in scale because you can't assume O(1) lookups - the best you can get is O(n^1/3). Maybe people understand the singularity concept poetically, I don't know.

skybrian 3y ago

I agree, but predicting the peak of an S curve isn’t easy either, as we saw during the pandemic. My conclusion is similar to Verge’s: predicting the far future is impossible. We can imagine a variety of scenarios, but you shouldn’t place much faith in them. Predicting even a couple years in advance looks pretty hard. Consider the next presidential election: the most boring scenario is Biden vs. Trump and Biden wins. Wildcard scenarios: either one of them, or both, dies before election day. Who can rule that out? Also consider that in any given year, there could be another pandemic. History is largely a sequence of surprise events.