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Comment by jamesrcole | Hacker News Reader

> As we advance it becomes more difficult to advance. You obviously make most advancements around the things that are easiest to improve. Then all the easy things are done.

This isn't some foregone conclusion. It completely depends on the rate at which the intelligence and abilities of the AI increases. If that rate was high enough, then the harder and harder problems would become easier and easier for it.

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Actually, evolution seems to show the opposite: The rate of advancement has only sped up, with billions of years between significant changes going to millions, to thousands, to tens and arguably to mere years now.

Having said that, we're probably looking at an S-curve with the physical limits of reality getting in the way in the end.

You're ignoring a lot of important factors. I'll give you most obvious ones. We often do genetics testing on fruit flies because they reproduce quickly and the initial population is large.

Your claim ignores this fact. The base population and number of interactions has increased.

I am not ignoring anything, I'm looking at the broader picture, which includes non-biological evolution. Simple rebuttal to your specific point: The population of self-improving AIs will also go from 0 to many more.

In a broader sense evolution moved from very static simple domains to dynamic malleable complex domains. Biological evolution speed is glacial compared to cultural evolution speed. Even then, cultural evolution is fairly slow compared to technological evolution.

The more you evolve I guess there's more surface area to evolve on. Similarly cavemen could only do so much. But today you can take a degree in physics, art, history, etc. and it's probably impossible for one person to know all that ever was and is. But it's possible for a caveman shaman to know everything the tribe knew up to that point. Probably. So while it's harder to make progress there's also a lot more places you can progress.

Just like fully extending a ladder brings the moon closer.

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