Why Artifical Intelligence Is Closer Than We Realize
—By Kevin Drum| Thu Nov. 17, 2011 2:15 PM PST


Cydonian.com

I haven't read Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee's Race Against the Machine yet, but Matt Yglesias has and he says that one of their analogies has changed the way he thinks about technological progress. Basically, if something improves x% per year, then the level of change looks small at first but explodes later, even though the actual rate of change has stayed the same the entire time:

The point of this, in terms of technological progress, is that we’ve gotten so accustomed to Moore’s Law that we sometimes overlook the implication that the deeper we get into the chessboard, the bigger the changes. We all know that computers advanced a lot between 1991 and 2011, but we should expect the scale of change over the next 20 years to dwarf those changes. This is a straightforward application of a well-known principle and some pretty basic math, but it’s usually not discussed in quite the right way. We think we’re used to the idea of rapid improvements in information technology, but we’re actually standing on the precipice of changes that are much larger in scale than what we’ve seen thus far.

This gives me an excuse to make the exact same point in a different way, specifically about the possibility of creating a computer with human-level intelligence. Suppose that in 1950 the fastest computer on the planet had about a trillionth the computing power of a human brain, and suppose also that computing power increases 1000x every 20 years. Here's what things would look like:

1950: Trillionth
1970: Billionth
1990: Millionth
2010: Thousandth
2024: Tenth
2030: One

In 1950, true AI would look like a joke. A computer with a trillionth the processing power of the human brain is just a pile of vacuum tubes. In 1970, even though computers are 1000x faster, it's still a joke. In 1990 it's still a joke. In 2010 it's still a joke. In 2024, it's still a joke. A tenth of a human brain is about the processing power of a housecat. It's interesting, but no threat to actual humans.

So: joke, joke, joke, joke, joke. Then, suddenly, in the space of six years, we have computers with the processing power of a human brain. Kaboom.

Here's the point: technological progress has been exactly the same for the entire 80-year period. But in the early years, although the relative progress was high, the absolute progress was minute. Moving from a billionth to a trillionth is invisible on a human scale. So computers progressed from ballistics to accounting to word processing to speech recognition, and sure, it was all impressive, but at no point did it seem like we were actually making any serious progress toward true AI. And yet, we were.

Assuming that Moore's Law doesn't break down, this is how AI is going to happen. At some point, we're going to go from 10% of a human brain to 100% of a human brain, and it's going to seem like it came from nowhere. But it didn't. It will have taken 80 years, but only the final few years will really be visible. As inventions go, video games and iPhones may not seem as important as radios and air conditioners, but don't be fooled. As milestones, they're more important. Never make the mistake of thinking that just because the growing intelligence of computers has been largely invisible up to now that it hasn't happened. It has.

Why Artifical Intelligence Is Closer Than We Realize | Mother Jones

Originally Posted by contracycle

In 2024, it's still a joke. A tenth of a human brain is about the processing power of a housecat. It's interesting, but no threat to actual humans.

Mouais. I think people might start taking it seriously then. As to the fact that people aren't paying attention, we got whole libraries of SF, we got Terminator, we got Cyberpunk, we got quite a few things saying that AIs aren't entirely a joke. And in a reasonably soonish future...

I mean, my first 'computing' stuff was a Space invader handheld, like this one, offered to me in the early 80s by my uncle: Space Invaders Hand Held game from the 1980's - YouTube
(maybe a bit better than this one. Or am I remembering wrong? And the case was blue. I still got it but it is no longer functioning. Damn!)

Nowadays, I can play Assassins' Creed - Redemption, with graphics that nearly take my breath away...

For our parents, the contrast might be even punchier - They grew up in an era where a TV was a rare luxury...

Quote:

Never make the mistake of thinking that just because the growing intelligence of computers has been largely invisible up to now that it hasn't happened. It has.

I like Kevin Drum a lot. But here I think he got it a bit wrong. We know things are moving ahead - most people have heard of Moore's law. Furthermore, processing power is one thing - intelligence, another.

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Not really. I was reading some tech.futurism tech blogs recently which were arguing that the general AI problem will never be solved, or that it would be centuries before it is. I think the point that it is likely to seem to appear pretty suddenly is valid.

But, while I haven't read those blogs, would not the difficulties be more centered on the question of "how to translate processing power into 'true' intelligence?" rather than simply debating processing power's Moore's Law?

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Well yes, but its quite possible that if you have enough processing power you get AI anway.