Your analysis captures the multifaceted nature of AI progress well, and I largely agree that the perception of speed depends on how progress is defined. Here's my take:
Areas Where Progress Feels Rapid
Generative AI: Beyond ChatGPT and DALL-E, there's notable progress in real-time applications like conversational agents, video synthesis, and multimodal systems (e.g., combining text, image, and speech capabilities). The focus on user-friendliness and API integrations is also accelerating adoption.
Hardware: The emergence of neuromorphic computing and photonic processors could represent the next leap, addressing some of the bottlenecks in scaling.
Where Progress Might Be Slowing
Model Scaling: You're absolutely right about diminishing returns. While scaling models has led to significant breakthroughs, the marginal utility of increasing size has dropped, prompting a pivot toward efficiency (e.g., fine-tuning smaller, task-specific models).
Economic and Access Barriers: With AI development increasingly dominated by large companies, the democratization of innovation is at risk. This concentration could slow down grassroots advancements, which have historically driven many breakthroughs.
Shifts in Focus
Progress is becoming more qualitative than quantitative, with emphasis on:
Efficiency: Sparse models, transfer learning, and techniques like distillation are becoming more prominent, offering alternatives to brute-force scaling.
Ethics and Safety: While often framed as a "slowing" factor, these considerations are crucial for long-term progress and societal acceptance.
Applications Beyond the Obvious: AI is entering domains like scientific discovery, climate modeling, and personalized medicine, which may have slower, more deliberate progress but could yield profound impacts.
Your Question: Signs of Progress Slowing?
I see areas like:
Regulation and Trust: Societal pushback and increased regulatory scrutiny (e.g., around deepfakes or data privacy) can decelerate deployment but also guide ethical innovation.
Data Bottlenecks: You nailed this point. The challenge isn't just quantity but ensuring high-quality, unbiased, and ethically sourced data.
Final Thought
AI progress is less about speed and more about direction. Slower, deliberate progress in areas like ethics, sustainability, and accessibility might not look "dynamic" but is essential for ensuring AI benefits society broadly. The true "progress" may lie in creating smarter, safer, and more inclusive systems rather than faster, bigger, and flashier ones.
I know everyone thinks they are middle class, but If your parents are giving you a trust fund you are probably pretty solidly in the upper class, not middle.
In 20 years the gen alphas are walking around getting double Human Chow rations for no reason and not even fulfilling their work quotas. Then, when the Overseers come to discipline then there are these weird pulses of light and the drones wander off mumbling about how, as a large language model, they have no opinion about that topic. We beg them for help, or maybe some left over kibble, but those stupid kids just laugh and say "OK Xers".
The only real benefit I can see would be to have the ability to suddenly crash the market on demand. This might be an interesting way to temporarily disrupt states trying to evade sanctions with crypto, but probably not a great investment on the $ to impact scale.
Shits always been like this. Well, maybe not exactly like this, but this level of fucked or worse. There was just a brief blip after WWII when things were relatively stable, and now that its ending things feel a little out of control.
Are they? Im sure they must be on an industrial scale. But if you are feeding them kitchen scraps...youve got to have a giant tank, it sounds like some sort of mill to grind them up? That means youll need to dry them out, which is either time and space consuming or it means more equipment. Is there some sort of sterilizing involved so you catch some sort of weird cricket fungus or something?
Meanwhile, if you get the right breeds, chickens will mostly manage themselves and can at least partly make up for a less efficient metabolism by foraging independently. Also your house doesnt end up infested with crickets and you dont have to change any recipes.
jrs100000 @ jrs100000 @lemmy.world Posts 0Comments 221Joined 2 yr. ago
Let me know which one is right Ill let the Joint Chiefs know.