Ours is a remarkable moment in world history. A transformative technology is ascending, and its supporters claim it will forever change the world. To build it requires companies to invest a sum of money unlike anything in living memory. News reports are filled with widespread fears that America’s biggest corporations are propping up a bubble that will soon pop.

… One of the most interesting aspects of bubbles is their regularity, not in terms of timing, but rather the progression they follow. Something new and seemingly revolutionary appears and worms its way into people’s minds. It captures their imagination, and the excitement is overwhelming. The early participants enjoy huge gains. Those who merely look on feel incredible envy and regret and – motivated by the fear of continuing to miss out – pile in. They do this without knowledge of what the future will bring or concern about whether the price they’re paying can possibly be expected to produce a reasonable return with a tolerable amount of risk. The end result for investors is inevitably painful in the short to medium term, although it’s possible to end up ahead after enough years have passed.

… I took the quote that opens this memo from Derek Thompson’s November 4 newsletter entitled “AI Could Be the Railroad of the 21^st Century. Brace Yourself,” about parallels between what’s going on today in AI and the railroad boom of the 1860s. Its word-for-word applicability to both shows clearly what’s meant by the phrase widely attributed to Mark Twain: “history rhymes.” — Read More

If you are reading this, you probably have strong opinions about AGI, superintelligence, and the future of AI. Maybe you believe we are on the cusp of a transformative breakthrough. Maybe you are skeptical. This blog post is for those who want to think more carefully about these claims and examine them from a perspective that is often missing in the current discourse: the physical reality of computation.

I have been thinking about this topic for a while now, and what prompted me to finally write this down was a combination of things: a Twitter thread, conversations with friends, and a growing awareness that the thinking around AGI and superintelligence is not just optimistic, but fundamentally flawed. The purpose of this blog post is to address what I see as very sloppy thinking, thinking that is created in an echo chamber, particularly in the Bay Area, where the same ideas amplify themselves without critical awareness. This amplification of bad ideas and thinking exhuded by the rationalist and EA movements, is a big problem in shaping a beneficial future for everyone. Realistic thought can be used to ground where we are and where we have to go to shape a future that is good for everyone.

I want to talk about hardware improvements, AGI, superintelligence, scaling laws, the AI bubble, and related topics. But before we dive into these specific areas, I need to establish a foundation that is often overlooked in these discussions. Let me start with the most fundamental principle. — Read More