[Link] “Revisiting the Insights model” (Median Group)
New version of the Median Group’s interactive AI timelines model: http://mediangroup.org/insights2.html (a)
It assumes that AGI will require new theoretical breakthroughs (which accords with my present view):
The model relies on the assumption that progress in AI relies on accumulating insights, fundamental advances in our understanding, that allow for improvements in capacity without increase in resources expended.
This choice makes an attempt to separate out the effects of true technological advancement from the effects of an increase in computing power devoted to a problem, both of which can increase the capacity of machine intelligence to solve complex problems. Computational power is an expensive, finite resource, and without a paradigm-shifting improvement in computing itself, precise allocation of that power alone will not be enough to continue advancing AI’s problem-solving capabilities.
Previous version here: http://mediangroup.org/insights
Thanks for linkposting this as I might not have seen it otherwise. FWIW, my own intuition is that work like this is among the most marginally valuable things we can do. Here, “work like this” roughly means something like “build a legible model with implications for something that’s clearly an important parameter when thinking about the long-term future and, crucially, have some way to empirically ground that model”. However, I didn’t look at this model in detail yet and so cannot currently comment on its specific predictions.