From: Stephen Reed (reed@cyc.com)
Date: Mon Jan 03 2005 - 06:35:20 MST
On Tue, 28 Dec 2004, justin corwin wrote:
> The unfortunate thing, from my point of view, is that generating a
> conservative estimation of the economic impact of AI is nearly
> impossible. [snip]
Justin,
A previous thread on this subject is:
http://www.sl4.org/archive/0405/8478.html
Economic Growth Given Machine Intelligence by Robin Hanson.
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Quoting from Hanson's paper:
Without machine intelligence, world product grows at a familiar rate of
4.3% per year, doubling every 16 years... With machine intelligence, the
(instantaneous) annual growth rate would be 45%, ten times higher, making
world product double every 18 months! If the product shares [a model
parameter] are raised by 20%, and general technology growth is lowered to
preserve the 4.4% figure [a model parameter], the new doubling time falls
to less than 6 months.
Such rapid growth may seem so far from historical experience that it
should be rejected out of hand. However, an empirical projection of
historical trends in world economic growth makes a median prediction that
the economy will transition to a doubling time of one to two years around
2025 (Hanson, 1998).
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Note that Hanson's model above assumes that rates of improvement of
computer and other technology are "exogenous", i.e. no recursive self-improvement!
Even when Hanson considers an "endogenous" model incorporating
learning-by-doing, he must constrain it.
Quoting:
... Reducing alpha-bar [a model parameter] to .24 eliminates diminishing
returns and and steady growth solutions entirely. [I.e. the Singularity
defined in economic terms.] Clearly endogenous [recursive
self-improvement] models are capable of producing much more dramatic
implications of substituting machine intelligence for human labor.
Cheers,
-Steve
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