Been thinking about the timing of the singularity a bit, given progress in generative AI recently, partly as a result of attending NVidia's annual GTC conference. I first heard about GPT3 two years ago, which impressed me with their 150 billion parameter neural net, because I compared that against the human brain's 100 billion neuron count (that is an incorrect comparison, though, which I'll mention below).
As you are well aware, GPT3 exploded into public awareness a year ago with the launch of ChatGPT. For some reason I had in my mind that Ray Kurzweil was predicting human brain level simulation by 2020. Turns out that was not quite correct - he was predicting human-like AI assistants by 2019, which I would say arrived a little late last year in 2023. He was predicting 2029 to be the time when AI will attain human level intelligence. So to compare apples with apples - the human brain contains around 700 trillion (7E14) synapses, which would roughly correpond to an AI's parameter count. GPT5 (due to be released sometime next year) will have around 2E12 parameters, still 2-3 orders of magnitude to go. Assuming continuation of current rates of AI improvement GPT3->GPT5 (4 years) is one order of magnitude increase in parameter count, it will take to 2033 for AI to achieve human parity. So I would say Kurzweil's singularity is a little delayed, to perhaps 2050, provided ecological collapse doesn't happen sooner. I would still say that creativity (which is an essential prerequisite) is still mysterious, in spite of glimmering of creativity shown by Gen AI. But singularity requires that machines design themselves - this means that semiconductor companies need to be run by AI, fabs need to be 3D printed, as well as the chips as well. It'll be a while before the cost of fabs comes down to the point where hyperexponential technological will happen. We will see these prerequisite technological changes years before the singularity really kicks off. Anyway my 2c - I know John is keen to promote the idea of singularity this decade - but I don't see it myself. Cheers -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders [email protected] http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/20240329012651.GE2357%40zen.
