Earlier quoted context omitted.
This technology (transformer language models) was invented about 6 years ago. For it to be far away means that at some point the exponential has to stop and we have an AI winter. That’s possible but doesn’t look likely at this point. It’s more likely that we will see superintelligence in our lifetime. And if the rate of progress does not slow it will be sooner rather than later. My current estimate is parity by 2030…
I don’t know much about AI but this: > That’s possible but doesn’t look likely at this point. Why doesn’t it seem likely? We’ve been trying to do great things with AI for decades. We don’t seem to have an excellent grasp on why certain things work well or if the strategies we’re using can ultimately yield much better intelligence. My impression is that we really don’t have a lot of control over progress and we could…
1. We are wildly underestimating the computation requirements.
2. There are theoretical roadblocks coming up such that even a very large number of smart people being paid to solve the problem won’t find a key sequence of ideas. Think Riemann Hypothesis, or Fermat’s Last Theorem, etc.
The counter-argument to (1) is that available computational resources are very high given the billions of dollars available. The one system we know to possess human-parity intelligence (the human brain) uses 12 watts and is not exactly a data center.
The counter-argument to (2) is that we’ve made faster than expected progress since the discovery of transformers, and we seem to be quite close already given the capabilities of GPT-4. Of course you don’t know that you’ve hit a roadblock until you hit it, but so far it’s been smooth sailing.