The paper does not claim that diminishing returns are a decisive obstacle to the singularity hypothesis (of course they aren’t: just strengthen your growth assumptions proportionally). It lists diminishing returns as one of five reasons to be skeptical of the singularity hypothesis, then asks for a strong argument in favor of the singularity hypothesis to overcome them. It reviews leading arguments for the singularity hypothesis and argues they aren’t strong enough to do the trick.
My point is that our best models of economic growth and innovation (such as the semi-endogeneous growth model that Paul Romer won the Nobel prize for) straightforwardly predict hyperbolic growth under the assumptions that AI can substitute for most economically useful tasks and that AI labor is accumulable (in the technical sense that you can translate a economic output into more AI workers). This is even though these models assume strong diminishing returns to innovation, in the vein of “ideas are getting harder to find”.
Furthermore, even if you weaken the assumptions of these models (for example assuming that AI won’t participate in scientific innovation, or that not every task can be automated) you still can get pretty intense accelerated growth (up to x10 greater than today’s frontier economies).
Accelerating growth has been the norm for most of human history, and growth rates of 10%/year or greater have been historically observed in, e.g. 2000s China, so I don’t think this is an unreasonable prediction to hold.
This is a paper about the technological singularity, not the economic singularity.
The economic singularity is an active area of discussion among leading economists. It is generally regarded as a fringe view, but one that many are willing to take seriously enough to discuss. Professional economists are capable of carrying this discussion out on their own, and I am happy to leave them to it. If your institute would like to contribute to this discussion, I would advise you to publish your work in a leading economics journal and to present your work at reputable economics departments and conferences. This would probably involve employing researchers with PhDs in economics and appointments in economics departments to conduct the relevant research. If you do not want to move the scholarly literature, you should defer to the literature, which is at present quite skeptical of most theses under the heading of the economic singularity.
It is important not to equivocate between accelerating growth (a claim about the rate of change of growth rates over time) and accelerated growth (a claim about growth rates having jumped to a higher level). The claim about “pretty intense accelerated growth (up to x10 greater than today’s frontier economies) is a claim of the second sort, whereas the singularity hypothesis is a claim of the first sort.
It is also important not to treat exponential growth (which grows at a constant relative rate) as accelerating growth. The claim about 10% annual growth rates is a claim about exponential growth, which is not accelerating growth.
It is deeply misleading to suggest that accelerating economic growth “has been the norm for most of human history”. The fastest growth we have ever seen over a sustained period is exponential growth, and that is constant, not accelerating. Most historical growth rates were far slower than economic growth today. I think you might mean that we have transitioned over time from slower to faster growth modes. That is not to say that any of these growth modes have been types of accelerating growth.
This is a paper about the technological singularity, not the economic singularity.
I don’t see the distinction here. William Nordhaus used the term “economic singularity” in the same sense as the technological singularity. Economists generally believe that technological innovation is the main cause of long-term economic growth, making these two topics inherently interconnected.
It is deeply misleading to suggest that accelerating economic growth “has been the norm for most of human history”.
From my understanding of historical growth rate estimates this is wrong. (As in, it is not “deeply misleading”.)
Most historical growth rates were far slower than economic growth today. I think you might mean that we have transitioned over time from slower to faster growth modes.
To me, this sounds very similar to “economic growth has accelerated over time”. And it sounds like this has happened over a long total period of time.
Maybe you think it has been very discrete with phases (seems unlikely to me as the dominant driver is likely to be population growth and better ability for technological development (e.g. reducing malnutrition)). Or maybe you think that it is key that the change in the rate of growth has historically been slow in sidereal time.
If your institute would like to contribute to this discussion, I would advise you to publish your work in a leading economics journal and to present your work at reputable economics departments and conferences.
I’m aware of various people considering trying to argue with economists about explosive growth (e.g. about the conclusions of this report).
In particular, the probability of explosive growth if you condition on human level machine intelligence. More precisely, something like human level machine intelligence and human level robotic bodies where the machine intelligence requires 10^14 FLOP / human equivalent second (e.g. 1⁄10 of an H100), can run 5x faster than humans using current hardware, and the robotic bodies cost $20,000 (on today’s manufactoring base).
From my understanding they didn’t ever end up trying to do this.
Personally, I argued against this being a good use of time:
It seems unlikely to me that the economists actually take these ideas seriously and their actual crux is most like “this is crazy, so I reject the premise”.
It doesn’t seem likely that the economists perspective is very enlightening for us (e.g. I don’t expect they would have many useful contributions).
I don’t think it seems that useful to persuade arbitrary economists from a credibility/influence perspective.
So, I think the main question here is a question of whether this is a good use of time.
I think it’s probably better to start by trying to talk with economists rather than trying to write a paper.
The paper does not claim that diminishing returns are a decisive obstacle to the singularity hypothesis (of course they aren’t: just strengthen your growth assumptions proportionally). It lists diminishing returns as one of five reasons to be skeptical of the singularity hypothesis, then asks for a strong argument in favor of the singularity hypothesis to overcome them. It reviews leading arguments for the singularity hypothesis and argues they aren’t strong enough to do the trick.
My point is that our best models of economic growth and innovation (such as the semi-endogeneous growth model that Paul Romer won the Nobel prize for) straightforwardly predict hyperbolic growth under the assumptions that AI can substitute for most economically useful tasks and that AI labor is accumulable (in the technical sense that you can translate a economic output into more AI workers). This is even though these models assume strong diminishing returns to innovation, in the vein of “ideas are getting harder to find”.
Furthermore, even if you weaken the assumptions of these models (for example assuming that AI won’t participate in scientific innovation, or that not every task can be automated) you still can get pretty intense accelerated growth (up to x10 greater than today’s frontier economies).
Accelerating growth has been the norm for most of human history, and growth rates of 10%/year or greater have been historically observed in, e.g. 2000s China, so I don’t think this is an unreasonable prediction to hold.
This is a paper about the technological singularity, not the economic singularity.
The economic singularity is an active area of discussion among leading economists. It is generally regarded as a fringe view, but one that many are willing to take seriously enough to discuss. Professional economists are capable of carrying this discussion out on their own, and I am happy to leave them to it. If your institute would like to contribute to this discussion, I would advise you to publish your work in a leading economics journal and to present your work at reputable economics departments and conferences. This would probably involve employing researchers with PhDs in economics and appointments in economics departments to conduct the relevant research. If you do not want to move the scholarly literature, you should defer to the literature, which is at present quite skeptical of most theses under the heading of the economic singularity.
It is important not to equivocate between accelerating growth (a claim about the rate of change of growth rates over time) and accelerated growth (a claim about growth rates having jumped to a higher level). The claim about “pretty intense accelerated growth (up to x10 greater than today’s frontier economies) is a claim of the second sort, whereas the singularity hypothesis is a claim of the first sort.
It is also important not to treat exponential growth (which grows at a constant relative rate) as accelerating growth. The claim about 10% annual growth rates is a claim about exponential growth, which is not accelerating growth.
It is deeply misleading to suggest that accelerating economic growth “has been the norm for most of human history”. The fastest growth we have ever seen over a sustained period is exponential growth, and that is constant, not accelerating. Most historical growth rates were far slower than economic growth today. I think you might mean that we have transitioned over time from slower to faster growth modes. That is not to say that any of these growth modes have been types of accelerating growth.
I don’t see the distinction here. William Nordhaus used the term “economic singularity” in the same sense as the technological singularity. Economists generally believe that technological innovation is the main cause of long-term economic growth, making these two topics inherently interconnected.
From my understanding of historical growth rate estimates this is wrong. (As in, it is not “deeply misleading”.)
To me, this sounds very similar to “economic growth has accelerated over time”. And it sounds like this has happened over a long total period of time.
Maybe you think it has been very discrete with phases (seems unlikely to me as the dominant driver is likely to be population growth and better ability for technological development (e.g. reducing malnutrition)). Or maybe you think that it is key that the change in the rate of growth has historically been slow in sidereal time.
I’m aware of various people considering trying to argue with economists about explosive growth (e.g. about the conclusions of this report).
In particular, the probability of explosive growth if you condition on human level machine intelligence. More precisely, something like human level machine intelligence and human level robotic bodies where the machine intelligence requires 10^14 FLOP / human equivalent second (e.g. 1⁄10 of an H100), can run 5x faster than humans using current hardware, and the robotic bodies cost $20,000 (on today’s manufactoring base).
From my understanding they didn’t ever end up trying to do this.
Personally, I argued against this being a good use of time:
It seems unlikely to me that the economists actually take these ideas seriously and their actual crux is most like “this is crazy, so I reject the premise”.
It doesn’t seem likely that the economists perspective is very enlightening for us (e.g. I don’t expect they would have many useful contributions).
I don’t think it seems that useful to persuade arbitrary economists from a credibility/influence perspective.
So, I think the main question here is a question of whether this is a good use of time.
I think it’s probably better to start by trying to talk with economists rather than trying to write a paper.