[horhay]

In the era of more software advancements, people have perceived the progress of tech to be incremental more than the opposite. I think even tech bigwigs of the past have said extrapolation is a futile endeavor because technology is unpredictable.

[Closi]

Bill Gates saw computers and extrapolated that there would be one in every home, Gordon Moore produced Moores Law which literally extrapolated compute in the 60s and almost still holding, and you can extrapolate that GPT-5 will perform better than GPT-4, and that there will probably be a GPT-6 that will be even better than that.

Extrapolating that technology will get better in the future when it has got better in the past isn’t a sure bet, but it’s a reasonably reliable one.

[quantumHazer]

No, past performances are not an indicator of future performance. Sometimes it happens to be, but many other times it does not.

[Closi]

I think this is a strange take - Technological advancements aren't mutual funds.

Of course it's an indicator of future performance - Not a guarantee, but certainly a indictator.

[horhay]

I think what I genuinely have an issue with is that extrapolation ignores the finer details of research work being taken to understand the current issues that may affect the future goals of a technology. It basically just ignores the science of it in favor of "well we've seen this level work before". The thing is, sometimes the more these experts learn about the current goal to beat in their product, the more things previously unknown and unplanned for present themselves as new issues. Extrapolating is a bit past-facing when you see it this way, because those new problems are entirely new challenges that haven't been considered in the equation and may require an entirely new approach. Every success is different, every failure, and every challenge is different. So extrapolating seems pointless.

[horhay]

Yeah, no. That's not my point. Saying something will get better in /any/ amount isn't unreasonable. That's being positive towards innovation and it's harmless. That's not exactly what the modern tech consumer is being made to expect nowadays. It's always the next iPhone moment. The next GPT. Always a huge leap. Like if we landed on the moon and we've been promised we'll have colonies outside the solar system by 2040