Dwarkesh

Algorithmic progress already doubles like every year or so.

So it's not insane to think that algorithmic progress can contribute to these compute things.

In terms of general speed up, we're already at like a thousand times research speed up multiplier compared to the Paleolithic or something.

So like...

From the point of view of anyone in most of history, we are going at a blindingly insane pace.

And all that we're saying here is that it's not going to stop, is that the same trend that has caused us to have a thousand times speed-up multiplier relative to past eras, and not even the Paleolithic, like what happened in the century between, I don't know, 600 and 700 AD, I'm sure there are things, I'm sure historians can point them out,

Then you look at the century between 1900 and 2000, and it's just completely qualitatively different.

Of course, there are models of whether that's stagnated recently or what's going on here.

We can talk about those.

We can talk about why we expect for the intelligence explosion to be an antidote to that kind of stagnation.

But nothing we're saying is that different from what has already happened.

We're not sure about that actually.

So according to one of these models is just a hyperbola.

Everything is along the same curve.

Another model is that there are these things like the literal Cambrian explosion.

If you want to take this very far back, go full Ray Kurzweil.

The literal Cambrian explosion, the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution as phase changes.

When I look at the economic modeling of this, my impression is the economists think that we don't have good enough data to be sure whether this is all one smooth process or whether it's a series of phase changes.

When it is one smooth process, the smooth process is often a hyperbola that shoots to infinity in weird ways.

We don't think it's going to shoot to infinity.