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Author here. I do believe it's going to be exponential (not yet), but that's out of scope for the article. However, if someone has a good explainer link for tha

Author here. I do believe it's going to be exponential (not yet), but that's out of scope for the article. However, if someone has a good explainer link for that, please put it here and I'll link it into the post.

jcgrillo 2y ago
Care to justify those beliefs or are we just supposed to trust your intuition? Why exponential and not merely quadratic (or some other polynomial)? How do you even quantify "it"? I'm teasing, somewhat, because I don't actually expect you're able to answer. Yours isn't reasoned arguments, merely religious fervor dressed up in techy garb. Prove me wrong!
- globalnode 2y ago
  that seems a bit harsh dont you think? besides youre the one making the assertion, you kinda need to do the proving ;)
  - jcgrillo 2y ago
    No, I don't think it's overly harsh. This hype is out of control and it's important to push back on breathless "exponential" nonsense. That's a term with well defined easily demonstrated mathematical meaning. If you're going to claim growth in some quantity x is exponential, show me that measurements of that quantity fit an exponential function (as opposed to some other function) or provide me a falsifiable theory predicting said fit.
    - kingkongjaffa 2y ago
      I believe they are using 'exponential' as a colloquialism rather than a strict mathematical definition. That aside, we would need to see some evidence of AI developments being bootstrapped by the previous SOTA model as key part of building the next model. For now, it's still human researchers pushing the SOTA models forwards. When people use the term exponential I feel that what they really mean is 'making something so _good_ that it can be used to make the N+1 iteration _more good_ than the last.
    - cubefox 2y ago
      > It's a bit crazy to think AI capabilities will improve exponentially. I am a very reasonable person, so I just think they'll improve some amount proportional to their current level. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qLe4PPginLZxZg5dP/almost-all-growth-is-exponential-growth https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qLe4PPginLZxZg5dP/almost-all...
    - flux3125 2y ago
      >No, I don't think it's overly harsh. Where's the falsifiable framework that demonstrates your conclusion? Or are we just supposed to trust your intuition?
    - brookst 2y ago
      Why is it “important to push back”? XKCD 386?
    - sandworm101 2y ago
      Well, any shift from "not able to do X" to "possibly able to do X sometimes" is at least exponential. 0.0001% is at least exponentially greater than 0%.
      - jcgrillo 2y ago
        I believe we call that a "step change". It's only really two data points at most so you can't fit a continuous function to it with any confidence.
- Red_Comet_88 2y ago
  If you read the article, he explains that there are multiple scaling paths now, whereas before it was just parameter scaling. I think it's reasonable to estimate faster progress as a result of that observation. I like that the HN crowd wants to believe AI is hype (as do I), but it's starting to look like wishful thinking. What is useful to consider is that once we do get AGI, the entirety of society will be upended. Not just programming jobs or other niches, but everything all at once. As such, it's pointless to resist the reality that AGI is a near term possibility. It would be wise from a fulfillment perspective to make shorter term plans and make sure to get the most out of each day, rather than make 30-40 year plans by sacrificing your daily tranquility. We could be entering a very dark era for humanity, from which there is no escape. There is also a small chance that we could get the tech utopia our billionaire overlords constantly harp on about, but I wouldn't bet on it.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    >There is also a small chance that we could get the tech utopia our billionaire overlords constantly harp on about, but I wouldn't bet on it. Mr. Musk's exitement knew no bounds. Like, if they are the ones in control of a near AGI computer system we are so screwed.
    - Red_Comet_88 2y ago
      This outcome is exactly what I fear most. Paul Graham described Altman as the type of individual who would become the chief of a cannibal tribe after he was parachuted onto their island. I call this type the inverse of the effective altruist: the efficient psychopath. This is the type of person that would have first access to an AGI. I don't think I'm being an alarmist when I say that this type of individual having sole access to AGI would likely produce hell on earth for the rest of us. All wrapped up in very altruistic language of "safety" and "flourishing" of course. Unfortunately, we seem to be on this exact trajectory. If open source AGI does not keep up with the billionaires, we risk sliding into an inescapable hellscape.
      - rightbyte 2y ago
- dleeftink 2y ago
  Not necessarily 'exponential' (more superlinear) in capabilities (yet) but rather in parameters/training data/compute/costs, which may sometimes be confused for the other. [0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exponential-growth-of-parameters-in-notable-ai-systems https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exponential-growth-of-par... [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exponential-growth-of-datapoints-used-to-train-notable-ai-systems?time=earliest..2022-06-29 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exponential-growth-of-dat... [2]: https://epoch.ai/blog/trends-in-training-dataset-sizes https://epoch.ai/blog/trends-in-training-dataset-sizes [3]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exponential-growth-of-computation-in-the-training-of-notable-ai-systems https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exponential-growth-of-com... [4]: https://blog.tebs-lab.com/p/not-exponential-growth https://blog.tebs-lab.com/p/not-exponential-growth
samsartor 2y ago
All past data shows is exponential growth in the cost of AI systems, not an exponential growth in capability. Capabilities have certainly expanded, but that is hard to measure. The growth curve is just as likely to be sigmoid-shaped. Just a phase transition from "computers process information strictly procedurally" to "computers use fuzzy logic sometimes too". And if we've exhausted all the easy wins, that explains the increased interest in alternative scaling paths. Obviously predicting the future is hard, and we won't know where this stops till we get there. But I think a degree of skepticism is warranted.
- DennisP 2y ago
  Once AI becomes self-improving, using its intelligence to make itself more intelligent, exponential progress seems like the logical consequence. Any lack of exponential progress before it becomes self-improving doesn't have much bearing on that. It certainly will be sigmoid-shaped in the end, but the top of the sigmoid could be way beyond human intelligence.
  - samsartor 2y ago
    I think we are already way past single-human intellence. No one person understands (or could possibly understand) the whole system from the silicon up. Even if you had one AI "person" a 100x smarter than their coworkers, who can solve hard problems at many levels of the stack, what could they come up with that generations of tens of thousands of humans working together haven't? Something surely, but it could wind up being marginal. Exponentially smarter AI meets exponentially more difficult wins.
    - PhilipRoman 2y ago
      >No one person understands (or could possibly understand) the whole system from the silicon up. I'm not a fan of this meme that seems to be very popular on HN. Someone with knowledge in EE and drivers can easily acquire enough programming knowledge in the higher layers of programming, at which point they can fill the gaps and understand the entire stack. The only real barrier is that hardware today is largely proprietary, meaning you need to actually work at the company that makes it to have access to the details.

jcgrillo 2y ago

Care to justify those beliefs or are we just supposed to trust your intuition? Why exponential and not merely quadratic (or some other polynomial)? How do you even quantify "it"? I'm teasing, somewhat, because I don't actually expect you're able to answer. Yours isn't reasoned arguments, merely religious fervor dressed up in techy garb. Prove me wrong!

globalnode 2y ago
that seems a bit harsh dont you think? besides youre the one making the assertion, you kinda need to do the proving ;)
- jcgrillo 2y ago
  No, I don't think it's overly harsh. This hype is out of control and it's important to push back on breathless "exponential" nonsense. That's a term with well defined easily demonstrated mathematical meaning. If you're going to claim growth in some quantity x is exponential, show me that measurements of that quantity fit an exponential function (as opposed to some other function) or provide me a falsifiable theory predicting said fit.
  - kingkongjaffa 2y ago
    I believe they are using 'exponential' as a colloquialism rather than a strict mathematical definition. That aside, we would need to see some evidence of AI developments being bootstrapped by the previous SOTA model as key part of building the next model. For now, it's still human researchers pushing the SOTA models forwards. When people use the term exponential I feel that what they really mean is 'making something so _good_ that it can be used to make the N+1 iteration _more good_ than the last.
  - cubefox 2y ago
    > It's a bit crazy to think AI capabilities will improve exponentially. I am a very reasonable person, so I just think they'll improve some amount proportional to their current level. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qLe4PPginLZxZg5dP/almost-all-growth-is-exponential-growth https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qLe4PPginLZxZg5dP/almost-all...
  - flux3125 2y ago
    >No, I don't think it's overly harsh. Where's the falsifiable framework that demonstrates your conclusion? Or are we just supposed to trust your intuition?
  - brookst 2y ago
    Why is it “important to push back”? XKCD 386?
  - sandworm101 2y ago
    Well, any shift from "not able to do X" to "possibly able to do X sometimes" is at least exponential. 0.0001% is at least exponentially greater than 0%.
    - jcgrillo 2y ago
      I believe we call that a "step change". It's only really two data points at most so you can't fit a continuous function to it with any confidence.
Red_Comet_88 2y ago
If you read the article, he explains that there are multiple scaling paths now, whereas before it was just parameter scaling. I think it's reasonable to estimate faster progress as a result of that observation. I like that the HN crowd wants to believe AI is hype (as do I), but it's starting to look like wishful thinking. What is useful to consider is that once we do get AGI, the entirety of society will be upended. Not just programming jobs or other niches, but everything all at once. As such, it's pointless to resist the reality that AGI is a near term possibility. It would be wise from a fulfillment perspective to make shorter term plans and make sure to get the most out of each day, rather than make 30-40 year plans by sacrificing your daily tranquility. We could be entering a very dark era for humanity, from which there is no escape. There is also a small chance that we could get the tech utopia our billionaire overlords constantly harp on about, but I wouldn't bet on it.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  >There is also a small chance that we could get the tech utopia our billionaire overlords constantly harp on about, but I wouldn't bet on it. Mr. Musk's exitement knew no bounds. Like, if they are the ones in control of a near AGI computer system we are so screwed.
  - Red_Comet_88 2y ago
    This outcome is exactly what I fear most. Paul Graham described Altman as the type of individual who would become the chief of a cannibal tribe after he was parachuted onto their island. I call this type the inverse of the effective altruist: the efficient psychopath. This is the type of person that would have first access to an AGI. I don't think I'm being an alarmist when I say that this type of individual having sole access to AGI would likely produce hell on earth for the rest of us. All wrapped up in very altruistic language of "safety" and "flourishing" of course. Unfortunately, we seem to be on this exact trajectory. If open source AGI does not keep up with the billionaires, we risk sliding into an inescapable hellscape.
    - rightbyte 2y ago
dleeftink 2y ago
Not necessarily 'exponential' (more superlinear) in capabilities (yet) but rather in parameters/training data/compute/costs, which may sometimes be confused for the other. [0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exponential-growth-of-parameters-in-notable-ai-systems https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exponential-growth-of-par... [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exponential-growth-of-datapoints-used-to-train-notable-ai-systems?time=earliest..2022-06-29 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exponential-growth-of-dat... [2]: https://epoch.ai/blog/trends-in-training-dataset-sizes https://epoch.ai/blog/trends-in-training-dataset-sizes [3]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exponential-growth-of-computation-in-the-training-of-notable-ai-systems https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exponential-growth-of-com... [4]: https://blog.tebs-lab.com/p/not-exponential-growth https://blog.tebs-lab.com/p/not-exponential-growth

samsartor 2y ago

All past data shows is exponential growth in the cost of AI systems, not an exponential growth in capability. Capabilities have certainly expanded, but that is hard to measure. The growth curve is just as likely to be sigmoid-shaped. Just a phase transition from "computers process information strictly procedurally" to "computers use fuzzy logic sometimes too". And if we've exhausted all the easy wins, that explains the increased interest in alternative scaling paths. Obviously predicting the future is hard, and we won't know where this stops till we get there. But I think a degree of skepticism is warranted.

DennisP 2y ago
Once AI becomes self-improving, using its intelligence to make itself more intelligent, exponential progress seems like the logical consequence. Any lack of exponential progress before it becomes self-improving doesn't have much bearing on that. It certainly will be sigmoid-shaped in the end, but the top of the sigmoid could be way beyond human intelligence.
- samsartor 2y ago
  I think we are already way past single-human intellence. No one person understands (or could possibly understand) the whole system from the silicon up. Even if you had one AI "person" a 100x smarter than their coworkers, who can solve hard problems at many levels of the stack, what could they come up with that generations of tens of thousands of humans working together haven't? Something surely, but it could wind up being marginal. Exponentially smarter AI meets exponentially more difficult wins.
  - PhilipRoman 2y ago
    >No one person understands (or could possibly understand) the whole system from the silicon up. I'm not a fan of this meme that seems to be very popular on HN. Someone with knowledge in EE and drivers can easily acquire enough programming knowledge in the higher layers of programming, at which point they can fill the gaps and understand the entire stack. The only real barrier is that hardware today is largely proprietary, meaning you need to actually work at the company that makes it to have access to the details.