News flash: predicting the future is hard
The individual who is the best at predicting the future is predicting ASI and full labor automation by 2040:
https://xcancel.com/peterwildeford/status/202963666232244661...
The sigmoids won't save you
21–30 of 297 posts
Re: The sigmoids won't save you
#22Re: The sigmoids won't save you
#23I don't know what the Y-axis is supposed to be on that Wharton AI capabilities graph, but I am not really convinced that Opus 4.6 has more than double the intelligence/capability/whatever of GPT 5.1 Max.
IIRC that graph tracks capabilities as time_to_solve a task for humans (i.e. the model can now handle tasks that usually take a human ~8h). Which, depending on what tasks you look at, could be a reasonable finding. I could see Opus 4.6 handling tasks that take ~8h for humans, and that 5.1 couldn't previously handle (with 5.1 being "limited" at 4h tasks let's say). It is a bit arbitrary, but I think this is what they'…
"It is a bit arbitrary, but I think this is what they're tracking."
I don't know if they can get their numbers right this way, but this seems a way more useful metric, than theoretic capabilities.
Re: The sigmoids won't save you
#24Hmmm, this is quite an interesting take by Scott. Lindy's Law is not actually a law and many exact minds will be provoked by the very name; it also fails spectacularly in certain contexts (e.g. lifetime of a single organism, though not necessarily existence of entire species). But at the same time, I am willing to take its invocation in the context of AI somewhat seriously. There is an international arms race with Ch…
"There is an international arms race with China" I keep seeing this. Where did it come from? Has China said that they intend to attack other countries using AI? Have other countries declared that they intend to attack China with AI? Also, why does anyone believe that AI could actually be that dangerous, given it's inherent unpredictable and unreliable performance? I would be terrified to rely on AI in a life or death…
AI in war is like Palintirs whole business model. You have a system that can effectively deal with ambiguity and has superhuman performance on reasoning plus superhuman physical abilities via embodiment…
Inherent unpredictable and unreliable performance is also quite the feature of human beings as well.
Re: The sigmoids won't save you
#25If you use the log scale you'll see that the time horizon of opus 4.6 was as expected...
Everything is linear on a log log scale with a fat marker.
Re: The sigmoids won't save you
#26News flash: predicting the future is hard
The individual who is the best at predicting the future is predicting ASI and full labor automation by 2040: https://xcancel.com/peterwildeford/status/202963666232244661...
> The individual who is the best at predicting the future
Going to need a big citation for that claim
Re: The sigmoids won't save you
#27If the scary AI is so inevitable, why do you feel such an overwhelming need to convince people about that? Surely you can just wait a bit, and they'll see for themselves.
Re: The sigmoids won't save you
#28A lot of words to say "The initial part of a sigmoidal curve is not very informative about the parameters of the sigmoid function in question."
That is true, but I generally enjoy reading a lot of words from Scott, who has a talent for writing. The entire plot of the Lord of the Rings could probably be compressed into less than 10 kB of text too. Edit: this seems to be a controversial comment, but IMHO a blog of Scott Alexander's type is an art form, not just a communication channel.
I find him more interesting when he talks about non-AI topics. Lots of other interesting people are like this too. I'd rather get my knowledge on AI from people who have unique insights into it. Scott has a lot of unique perspectives of his own, but his views on AI are bog-standard for his social group.
Re: The sigmoids won't save you
#29"Exponentials all tend to become sigmoids but you can't predict exactly when" is a true statement, but I'm not sure it needed an article. This doesn't say much, and the author fights their own points a couple times, suggesting that they maybe didn't think through what they wanted to write until they were in the middle of writing it and started realizing their assumptions didn't match what they expected the data to sa…
The point is the tiring arguments from AI skeptics saying “things are flattening, they have to” which while technically correct says nothing because no one knows when that will happen and we see no mechanism for this yet. Lindy’s law as a reasonable prediction under total uncertainty is interesting and insightful and a lot of people don’t know about it or why it holds. I did enjoy the reference to this!
Re: The sigmoids won't save you
#30I don't know what the Y-axis is supposed to be on that Wharton AI capabilities graph, but I am not really convinced that Opus 4.6 has more than double the intelligence/capability/whatever of GPT 5.1 Max.
According to this article: whenever someone games a benchmark to make an upward chart on some y-axis, it's YOUR responsibility to prove how and why that trend can't continue indefinitely.
emoji face with eyes rolling upward