From: Ken Clements (Ken@Innovation-On-Demand.com)
Date: Tue Dec 21 1999 - 17:11:49 MST
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
> If computing speed doubles
> every two years, what happens when computer-based AIs are doing the
> research?
Just a reminder, "computing speed" does not actually change. If I run the same
program on this computer next year, it will not go any faster. This may be
obvious to all on this list, but I bet there is a chunk of the population that
reads in the paper (well, sees on T.V.) that computing speed doubles, and expect
their computers to get faster. What this really means is that we expect to be
able to buy twice the Instructions Per Second, year after next, than we can buy
today for the same economic unit. The hardware does not just get twice as fast,
or cost 1/2 as much, it does some of both. At some point in the future the
economic unit will be dominated by the time it takes to move atoms into position,
which will be limited by the speed of light. Getting atoms from that next-door
galaxy will take a while.
-Ken
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