No, because we have seen massive improvements in AI over the last years, and all the evidence points to this progress continuing at a fast pace.
In reality, AI progress and capabilities are not so reducible to singular quantities. For example, it’s not clear that we will ever get rid of the model’s tendencies to just produce garbage or nonsense sometimes. It’s entirely possible that we remain stuck at more incremental improvements now, and I think the bogeyman of “superintelligence” needs to be much more clearly defined rather than by extrapolation of some imagined quantity. Or maybe we reach a somewhat human-like level, but not this imagined “extra” level of superintelligence.
Basically the argument is something to the effect of “big will become bigger and bigger, and then it will become like SUPER big and destroy us all”.
Surely this time it's going to be different, AGI is just around a corner. /s
On a side note, I find this type of critique of what future of tech might look like the most uninteresting one. Since tech by nature inspiries people about the future, all tech get hyped up. all you gotta do then is pick any tech, point out people have been wrong, and ask how likely is it that this time it is different.
Now, chain of breakthroughs happening in a small timeframe? Good luck with that.
Just to make it clear, I see only 1 breakthrough [0]. Everything that happened afterwards is just application of this breakthrough with different training sets / to different domains / etc.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_Is_All_You_Need
Sometimes this is masked by people spending more due to the industry becoming more important, but it tends to be obvious over the longer term.
I'm not saying this as someone cheering this on; I'm alarmed by it. But I can't pretend that it's running out of steam. It's possible it will run out of money, but even if so, only for a while.
For example, why hire any call center workers? They already outsourced the jobs to the lowest bidder and their customers absolutely hate it. Fire those people and get some AI in there so it can provide shitty service for even cheaper.
In other words, it will just make things a bit worse for everyone but those at the very top. usual shit.
You could have seen this exact kind of thing written 5 years ago in a thread about blockchains.
For example, transaction costs/latency/throughput.
I realize the conversation is about blockchain, but I say my point still stands.
With blockchain the main problem was always "why do I need this?" and that's why it died without being the world changing zero trust amazing technology we were promised and constantly told we need.
With LLMs the problem is they don't actually know anything.
So in that sense, if we're playing reference class tennis, this looks a lot more like a project to break the sound barrier than a project to break the light barrier. Is there a stronger case you can make that these people, who are demonstrating quite tangible progress every month (if you follow the literature rather than just product launches), are working on a hopelessly unsolvable problem?
We've been trying to build a knowledge representation system powerful enough to capture the world for decades, but this is something that goes more into the foundations of mathematics and philosophy that it has to do with the majority of engineering research. You need a literal genius to figure that out. The majority of those "talented" people and funding aren't doing that.
Not sure if that same pace applies to the physical realm where costs are high (resources, energy, pollution, etc), and the risk of getting it wrong could mean a lot of negative consequences. e.g. I'm handling construction materials, and the robot trips on a barely noticeable rock leaking paint, petrol, etc onto the ground costing more than just the initial cost of materials but cleanup as well.
This creates a potential future outcome (if I can be so bold as to extrapolate with the dangers that has) that this "frenzy of talent" as you put it will innovate themselves out of a job with some may cash out in the short term closing the gate behind them. What's left is ironically the people that can sell, convince, manipulate and work in the physical world at least for the short and medium term. AI can't fix the scarcity of the physical that easily (e.g. land, nutrients, etc). Those people who still command scarcity will get the main rewards of AI in our capital system as value/economic surplus moves to the resources that are scarce and have advantage via relative price adjustments.
Typically people had three different strengths - physical (strength and dexterity), emotional IQ, and intelligence/problem solving. The new world of AI at least in the medium term (10-20 years) will tilt the value away from the latter into the former (physical) - IMO a reversal of the last century of change. May make more sense to get good at gym class and get a trade rather than study math in the future for example. Intelligence will be in abundance, and become a commodity. This potential outcome does alarm me not just from a job perspective, but in terms of fake content, lack of human connection, lack of value of intelligence in general (you will find people with high IQ's lose respect from society in general), social mobility, etc. I can see a potential to the old world where lords that command scarcity (e.g. landlords) command peasants again - reversing the gains of the industrial revolution as an extreme case depending on general AI progress (not LLMs). For people who's value is more in capital or land vs labor, AI seems like a dream future IMO.
There's potential good here, but sadly I'm alarmed because the likelihood that the human race aligns to achieve it is low (the tragedy of the commons problem). It is much easier, and more likely, certain groups use it and target people of value economically now, but with little power (i.e the middle class). The chance of new weapons, economic displacement, fake news, etc for me trumps a voice/chat bot and a fancy image generator. The "adjustment period" is critical to manage; and I think climate change, and other broader issues tells us sadly IMO our likely success in doing this.
Seems like the base case here is for the exponential growth to continue, and you'd need a convincing argument to say otherwise.
Without specifics all I can say is that I don't acknowledge any measurable benefits of AI (in its' current state) in real world applications. So I'd say I am leaning towards latter.
Refining technology is easier than the original breakthrough, but it doesn't usually lead to a great leap forward.
LLMs were the result of breakthroughs, but refining them isn't guaranteed to lead to AGI. It's not guaranteed (or likely) to improve at an exponential rate.
They can be useful tools ro be sure, but it seems more and more clear that they will not reach AGI.
A thousand years ago we hadn't invented electricity, democracy, or science. I really don't think we're a thousand years away from AI. If intelligence is really that hard to build, I'd take it as proof that someone else must have created us humans.
Not saying we're in necessarily the same situation. But it remains difficult to evaluate effort required for actual progress.
[1]: https://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/dartmouth/dartmo...