I don’t think Eliezer has an unambiguous upper hand in the FOOM debate at all
Then I listed a bunch of ways in which the world looks more like Robin’s predictions, particularly regarding continuity and locality. I said Robin’s predictions about AI timelines in particular looked bad. This isn’t closely related to the topic of your section 3, where I mostly agree with the OP.
Hmm, I think this is fair, rereading that comment.
I feel a bit confused here, since at the scale that Robin is talking about, timelines and takeoff speeds seem very inherently intertwined (like, if Robin predicts really long timelines, this clearly implies a much slower takeoff speed, especially when combined with gradual continuous increases). I agree there is a separate competitiveness dimension that you and Robin are closer on, which is important for some of the takeoff dynamics, but on overall takeoff speed, I feel like you are closer to Eliezer than Robin (Eliezer predicting weeks to months to cross the general intelligence human->superhuman gap, you predicting single-digit years to cross that gap, and Hanson predicting decades to cross that gap). Though it’s plausible that I am missing something here.
In any case, I agree that my summary of your position here is misleading, and will edit accordingly.
I think my views about takeoff speeds are generally similar to Robin’s though neither Robin nor Eliezer got at all concrete in that discussion so I can’t really say. You can read this essay from 1998 with his “outside-view” guesses, which I suspect are roughly in line with what he’s imagining in the FOOM debate.
I think that doc implies significant probability on a “slow” takeoff of 8, 4, 2… year doublings (more like the industrial revolution), but a broad distribution over dynamics which also puts significant probability on e.g. a relatively fast jump to a 1 month doubling time (more like the agricultural revolution). In either case, over the next few doublings he would by default expect still further acceleration. Overall I think this is basically a sensible model.
(I agree that shorter timelines generally suggest faster takeoff, but I think either Robin or Eliezer’s views about timelines would be consistent with either Robin or Eliezer’s views about takeoff speed.)
To clarify, what I said was:
Then I listed a bunch of ways in which the world looks more like Robin’s predictions, particularly regarding continuity and locality. I said Robin’s predictions about AI timelines in particular looked bad. This isn’t closely related to the topic of your section 3, where I mostly agree with the OP.
Hmm, I think this is fair, rereading that comment.
I feel a bit confused here, since at the scale that Robin is talking about, timelines and takeoff speeds seem very inherently intertwined (like, if Robin predicts really long timelines, this clearly implies a much slower takeoff speed, especially when combined with gradual continuous increases). I agree there is a separate competitiveness dimension that you and Robin are closer on, which is important for some of the takeoff dynamics, but on overall takeoff speed, I feel like you are closer to Eliezer than Robin (Eliezer predicting weeks to months to cross the general intelligence human->superhuman gap, you predicting single-digit years to cross that gap, and Hanson predicting decades to cross that gap). Though it’s plausible that I am missing something here.
In any case, I agree that my summary of your position here is misleading, and will edit accordingly.
I think my views about takeoff speeds are generally similar to Robin’s though neither Robin nor Eliezer got at all concrete in that discussion so I can’t really say. You can read this essay from 1998 with his “outside-view” guesses, which I suspect are roughly in line with what he’s imagining in the FOOM debate.
I think that doc implies significant probability on a “slow” takeoff of 8, 4, 2… year doublings (more like the industrial revolution), but a broad distribution over dynamics which also puts significant probability on e.g. a relatively fast jump to a 1 month doubling time (more like the agricultural revolution). In either case, over the next few doublings he would by default expect still further acceleration. Overall I think this is basically a sensible model.
(I agree that shorter timelines generally suggest faster takeoff, but I think either Robin or Eliezer’s views about timelines would be consistent with either Robin or Eliezer’s views about takeoff speed.)