I'm a bit confused by your response. First, the meat of the argument:
You are implicitly comparing two models: Mfast and Mslow, which make predictions about the world. Each model makes several claims, including the shape of the function governing AI improvement and about how the shape of that function comes about[1]. So far as I can tell, a typical central claim of people who endorse Mfast is that AIs working on themselves will allow their capabilities to grow hyper-exponentially. Those who endorse Mslow don't seem to disp... (read more)
Note that those who endorse Mslow don't think exponential growth will cut it;
it'll be much faster than that (in line with the long-term trends in human
history, which are faster than exponential). I'm thinking of e.g. Paul
Christiano and Ajeya Cotra here who I'm pretty sure agree growth has been and
will continue to be superexponential (the recent trend of apparent exponential
growth being an aberration).
My complaining about the term "continuous takeoff" was a response to Matthew
Barnett and others' usage of the term, not Yitz', since as you say Yitz didn't
use it.
Anyhow, to the meat: None of the "hard takeoff people" or hard takeoff models
predicted or would predict that the sorts of minor productivity advancements we
are starting to see would lead to a FOOM by now. Ergo, it's a mistake to
conclude from our current lack of FOOM that those models made incorrect
predictions.
I'm a bit confused by your response. First, the meat of the argument:
You are implicitly comparing two models: Mfast and Mslow, which make predictions about the world. Each model makes several claims, including the shape of the function governing AI improvement and about how the shape of that function comes about[1]. So far as I can tell, a typical central claim of people who endorse Mfast is that AIs working on themselves will allow their capabilities to grow hyper-exponentially. Those who endorse Mslow don't seem to disp... (read more)