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I think your last sentence is a reasonable stance - but I'd disagree the fact that they are actually sigmoids rather than exponentials matters - it only matters
by Mentlo 18d ago
I think your last sentence is a reasonable stance - but I'd disagree the fact that they are actually sigmoids rather than exponentials matters - it only matters if the limit is within the debated area - i.e. if exponentials in AI approach the limit far after they acquire ability to extinct humanity - then the debate on sigmoids or exponentials is academic. I make no claims here as to which it is - just that the difference itself matters less than where the limit is.
As to the uncertainty - I think uncertainty calibration around AI is different depending on which domains you draw your instincts from. A lot of this will be gut driven rather than hard data driven, because we've only scratched the surface on hard data; and because it's gut driven, it will be emotions mediated (and therefore you could say doomerism or acceleratism boils down to the main emotional disposition about the world and hope vs cynicism).
I do find it informative though that doomerism is saturated with people with 30+ years experience in building AI systems and ML systems OR deep cross-disciplinary understanding of dynamic systems (biology, sociology, philosophy), whereas acceleratism is saturated by traditional software engineering. That doesn't collapse the debate into a resolved binary, but for me it's informative.
I think the main here is that there's so many vectors to talk past each other. At the very least, everyone should disclose where they're communicating a certain assertion from - present vs future + which axioms they subscribe to or not - because that's where it collapses typically. LeCun vs. the rest of the AI field is an example of where this collapses - because LeCun is so hyperfixated on human-like intelligence, whereas the rest of the field is concerned about an alien intelligence with sufficient actuators to affect the world. Clashing axiomatics.