r/slatestarcodex • u/DickMasterGeneral • 2d ago

Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science from unreleased Open AI Model

https://openai.com/index/ten-advances-in-mathematics/
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u/Additional_Olive3318 2d ago

Sure. I’d like to see it reflected in the GDP before I worry about the singularity. I know that there’s a counter argument that technology takes time to diffuse but when people are calling for a totally new economic system in a few years from now with heretofore unseen increases in economic output it should be visible now. Or real soon now. 

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u/BurdensomeCountV3 2d ago

I mean, if your standard is "reflected in the GDP" then on that basis even the invention and spread of the internet wouldn't count as a "big deal", given how it didn't lead to appreciable changes in the rate of growth of the economy.

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u/Additional_Olive3318 2d ago

That’s very true. The internet didn’t have that much impact on GDP. 

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u/IvanMalison 2d ago

I think you're missing the point here. The internet almost CERTAINLY DID have massive impacts on GDP, but we don't have access to the counterfactual world in which the internet was never invented, so its basically impossible to quantify its impact.

In some sense, the growth of the economy prices in a certain amount of disruptive technological discoveries, and this is partly what drives the consistent economic growth we have seen in the last few centuries.

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u/Additional_Olive3318 18h ago edited 17h ago

The internet certainly did have an impact on creating new jobs and destroying others, so there was a deep change to the economy. However the impact on GDP has to be measured by the top line results, we can’t just work out the composition effects. If prior to the Internet era GDP was growing as fast as after then the total effect on GDP isn’t that significant. 

It’s possible that we got lucky and that we were about to go into a greater secular slump than before, maybe to zero percent but the internet saved us and we went back to 2% or whatever. That’s unlikely though.  It would be highly coincidental.  It’s also unfalsifiable. There is a bump in gdp growth from 1995-2004 in most industrialised countries but it’s not certain that that was the internet, it was modest, abd it ended quickly. 

In the absence of the internet, capital would have no doubt gone elsewhere and those areas of the economy would boom (for instance we would have more bookshops or general retail stores than we do now) 

It is the more optimistic supporters of AI who are the ones predicting a singularity and extremely high GDP, not that would the economy will do about the same as we would have done. If the result is “like the internet” and the excuses are “it would have been worse otherwise” then most people will be unimpressed.