Earlier quoted context omitted.
>because I'm genuinely in agreement with Peter Thiel's argument that technological progress is actually decelerating relative to how it was moving 60 years ago Is it possible we just covered most of the low-hanging fruit in the 1800s and 1900s, and now the only remaining discoveries that are really ground-breaking are the really difficult ones, hence the slower rate?
It's possible, even plausible, but I think it's not so. My guess is that in the decades around 1900 America and western Europe were considerably more dynamic -- there was less overall resistance to innovation. To pick a tiny example, driver's licenses weren't required in all states until, iirc, the 1950s. Radio had decades of development before the FCC. Some doctors tested new treatments on themselves. Immigration fr…
The AI Misinformation Epidemic
261–270 of 286 posts
Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
You probably should watch that video. This is one of its core subject. Kay makes a valuable distinction between invention and innovation, and what you describe falls into the "innovation" bucket. It's incremental. Yes, our cellphones are more powerful than mainframes of the old, but do we utilize them to the same extent?
So are FinFETs, Quantum Wells, EUV lithography, compact linear accelerators and all the devices necessary for shrinking just "innovation"? What's "invention then"?
Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
To reuse a point brought up quite often in this context, making predictions about when and if AGI might arrive based on extrapolations of current technological trends is like trying to predict when the atom bomb would have been created based on a chart of conventional explosive yields leading up to 1940. Undiscovered discoveries are not predictable, certainly not by extrapolating from the current progress. This appli…
"There are no experts in AGI right now" ... Well there's Ben Goertzel from http://opencog.org/
Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's reasonable to equate 'technologies that existed since the 60s' with 'technologies that are ubiquitous today'. I'm in the bottom 15% of my country (UK) by income and I have access to things like: near-instantaneous hot water at all times, affordable next-day delivery services from a pocket-sized device I carry around with me, international air travel that is affordable for me, efficient fridge/freez…
Almost everything you listed there already started becoming common by the 1960's. Step back and forget about informational technology. Look at the world of atoms, not at the world of bits. Since the decommissioning of the Concorde, our fastest commercial means of transportation has actually been getting slower , not faster. Man hasn't reached farther out in space than the moon missions of the 1960s. The first half th…
tl;dr: Indoor heating significantly predates 1900. Though relevant inventions largely predate 1900, widespread adoption was indeed between 1900 and 1950 for electrification, automobiles, air travel, radio, washing machines, and indoor plumbing. The years after 1950 include most of the developments and use of the Concorde, moon missions, antibiotics, rockets, and dishwashers. I can only describe the inclusion of "space travel" and "satellites" in a list of things from the "first half of the 20th century" as trolling. The remainder of my post is what I found for each topic.
The Concorde flew from 1969 to 2003. The last time humans traveled past low-Earth orbit was 1972. (Space exploration itself started in 1957, and since then unmanned space probes have explored no shortage of interesting targets.)
Penicillin was identified in 1928 but first made available to civilians in 1945. Of the ~50 antibiotics on the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines, I found 7 discovered before 1950: penicillin G, penicillin V, chloramphenicol, dapsone, 4-aminosalicylic acid, streptomycin, and pyrazinamide. The final one was not used until after 1950.
The basics of electricity, including arc lighting (1802), incandescent lightbulbs (1878), motors (1832 or even the 1740s?), telegraphs (1774), power stations, alternating current, etc were all invented and in use before 1900. Of course, the period of electrification in now-developed countries was roughly from the mid-1880s until around 1950.
The basics of automobiles also predate 1900, but mass production began around then. Many major developments in automobiles indeed happened between 1900 and 1950.
Air travel via balloons predates 1900 by more than a century, but both rigid airships and (controlled, powered) heaver-than-air flight developed between 1900 and 1950.
Rockets were first developed by the 13th century, and found significant and widespread military use before 1900 (eg, the Star-Spangled banner was written in 1814). Modern rocketry probably began in 1926 with the first liquid-fueled rocket launched by Goddard. Germany used the V-2 rocket throughout WWII, and this presumably is the reason for inclusion in "the first half of the 20th century".
As mentioned previously, the use of rockets for space exploration (and thus also satellites) did not begin until 1957 with the launch of Sputnik. Human spaceflight began in 1961.
Early radio predates 1900, but indeed radio largely developed between 1900 and 1950.
I had difficulty summarizing the history of water treatment; it seems that many inventions predated 1900 but indeed the period between 1900 and 1950 was the main significant period of development in the United States.
Indoor heating predates the invention of writing. Almost every development in the history and widespread use of heating predates 1900.
Washing machines predate 1900, but the development and widespread use of electric washing machines was indeed between 1900 and 1950.
Dishwashers also predate 1900. Significant aspects of their development happened between 1900 and 1950, but their widespread use was after 1950.
Indoor plumbing predated 1900 by millennia, but indeed the widespread period of adoption in the United States was between 1900 and 1950.
I do not know how to summarize the improvements in sanitation, but I would probably say that 1900 to 1950 did not feature particularly notable improvements in literacy.
Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
True that. 1880-1950 (70 years) took us from train-and-telegraph to jet-and-atom bomb. Horse and carriage was the top-tier tech for personal transportation in 1880, and they were just starting to understand that diseases are often caused by these little blobby creatures called germs. 1950-2020 (70 years) will take us much less distance. Almost everything we're developing seems to be about information processing. If y…
A flying car would be nearly magical for someone from 1880. But a smartphone to someone from 1950? It would seem pretty fancy, but not impossible to imagine. The guy from 1950 already knows the basic tech behind it - it has a screen, it uses wireless data, and is powered by computers.
Now, we would find flying cars "nearly magical" (myself included, having been recently amazed by modern vertical takeoff fighter jets) but apparently aren't impressed by smartphones (myself not included, even before having recently learned about semiconductor fabrication techniques).
Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can accept Newton's second law of motion and Einstein's general relativity, but so far I'm less accepting of deep learning for finding some coefficients for fitting some data or neural networks for fitting some sigmoid functions to some data. Apparently the sigmoid functions have some nice theoretical properties and can be useful in approximating some complicated data; e.g., IIRC D. Bertsekas at MIT used such fitti…
I am not an expert in this field. From what I currently understand in the CNN/deep learning arena, sigmoids are avoided in favor of RELU, due to a number of reasons, chiefly that of avoiding gradient fade during backprop. I'm surprised that you don't mention this (or don't seem to be aware of it), though? Is this intentional, or is there another reason?
Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not sure I'd consider stuff like the vast majority of human knowledge sitting in my pocket to be less useful than the dishwasher because it has fewer moving parts or most people can afford to fly to be less of an achievement than the megarich can fly 50% faster. Not sure anybody told you to consider that. What they did ask you to consider is that technological progress, outside of the digital realm, has been slowed…
The fact that a relatively low income individual has access to a large number of goods and services which were once considered exclusive to the wealthy is a clear indication that technological progress has continued at a steady pace. While 'slowed down' or 'sped up' are difficult to quantify, the fact that 3 billion human beings have gained access to smartphone technology over the last decade seems to support the ide…
One reason we have stagnated can be revealed in the bias of our new language. Where we once used the terms "1st World" and "3rd World" we now use "Developed" and "Developing" -- language that is excessively bullish about globalization while implicitly pessimistic about technology.
Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not sure I'd consider stuff like the vast majority of human knowledge sitting in my pocket to be less useful than the dishwasher because it has fewer moving parts or most people can afford to fly to be less of an achievement than the megarich can fly 50% faster. Not sure anybody told you to consider that. What they did ask you to consider is that technological progress, outside of the digital realm, has been slowed…
Consider cameras that can shoot 10000 frames a second at ultra high definition resolutions; in the 1970s we had shitty auto developing film as the height of consumer tech. Battery tech has gotten so advanced you're literally carrying around a firestorm's worth of energy in your pocket and only notice in the rare case that things go spectacularly wrong; compare that to the heavy inefficient NiCds of your parent's age.…
2. Technological progress is based on the outcomes they bring with them. Easy or hard to achieve -- doesn't matter in terms of this measurement. Insane advancements in physics is not technological progress unless it enables us to vastly improve our existing capabilities to do things as humans.
Thiel argues this by pointing to a tech were all excited about: self-driving cars.
Thiel argues the original invention of the car was still a bigger innovation.
electricity -> cars -> airplanes -> rockets -> space travel
radio -> tv
laundry machines -> dishwashers
antibiotics -> vaccines
^^^All first 3/4 of 20th century. Self-driving cars would be merely a close match to any one of them. For the next 50 years to match what we saw in the start of the 20th century, we are going to need at least 4 or 5 other technological revolutions in the world of atoms for the comparison to be even similar.
Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that's because most of the money and talent has focused on the digital realm. Progress is going where there is the best ROI.
Which is kind of the point. ROI is not a strong predictor of societal improvement.
Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oil prices are essentially capped at $60/barrel for the foreseeable future due to unconventional extraction techniques -> was not long ago oil production was thought to have peaked. Solar power can be economical without subsidy. Robotic and minimally invasive surgery. Battery cost becoming viable for mass-market cars. Gene sequencing. Sensors for pennies. New materials (cheaper carbon fibre, metal alloys, semiconduct…
No, because you're failing to distinguish between game-changer tech - transistors, DNA sequencing, operating systems, powered flight, all as classes of original and unexpected inventions - and refinement tech, which is made of game-changer inventions made smaller, cheaper, and more widely avaialable. Game changer tech changes what can be imagined. Refinement tech changes what can be bought by consumers. There's been…
Refinement is taking existing tech and moving it up (e.g. 10 to 30).
Thiel argues real game changer tech emerges when it brings us from 0 to 1. From nothing to something huge.