Re: AI big wins

Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Fri, 25 Sep 1998 12:29:41 -0700

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky writes:
>> Mere mention of the work "feedback" is not sufficient to argue for a sudden
>> and sustained acceleration in growth rates, which is what you seem to claim.
>
>I didn't just "mention" it; I talked about the behavior of the sum of the
>series of I'1 = C(O, P, I), I'2 = C(P, O, I + I'1), I'3 = C(P, O, I + I'1 +
>I'2), etc. I don't see any realistic way to get steady progress from this
>model. Flat, yes, jumps, yes, but not a constant derivative.

You just keep repeating your claim about the behavior of the sum, without elaborating why one thing is more "realistic" than another. If C is concave in its third argument, you get subexponential growth. If C is convex instead, you get superexponential growth (which may still be very slow for a long time). And lots of functions are neither concave nor convex. Why is a strongly convex C more realistic?

Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/ RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884 140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-8614