[piskov]

Because every s-curve looks like an exponent for those in the start.

I mean look at the first plane, then first air-jets: it’s understandable to assume we would travel the galaxy in something like 2050.

Meanwhile planes are basically the same last 60 years.

LLMs are great but I firmly believe that in 2100 all is basically the same as in 2020: no free energy (fusion), no AGI.

[II2II]

> I mean look at the first plane, then first air-jets: it’s understandable to assume we would travel the galaxy in something like 2050.

To someone who did not understand what flight is, perhaps. For anyone who understood the laws of physics, no. A similar thing can be said of Moore's Law. The main difference is we likely exceeded the rational expectations derived from Moore's Law (though that was based more on computer performance, rather than the actual expression of Moore's Law in terms of transistor count) while the more rational expectations of flight (routine supersonic, perhaps even suborbital) are still flights of fancy. But that is more a product of cost than technical ability. Simply put, we figured out how to make semiconductors extraordinarily inexpensive. Flight is still expensive.

[SAI_Peregrinus]

Nature abhors an exponential. They all seem to either turn out to be sigmoid or collapse entirely.

[IAmGraydon]

Well...everything has a limit, so yes every example of exponential growth gets capped somewhere and becomes a sigmoid. Viral spread, population growth, radioactive decay, tree branching, etc. are all exponential until they hit their limit. Otherwise each process would quickly proceed to infinity. That doesn't really tell us much about where the ceiling is for LLMs, however.

[marviio]

OTOH: First flight: 1903. Moon landing: 1969. Humanity went from ”Look, we’re 3 meters off the ground!” to “We just parked on the Moon” in barely a lifetime. 66 years.

[CagedCoder]

And how much further have we gotten past the moon since then?

This isn't an OTOH, it's just another example of looking at the exponential part of the S-curve.

[Yossarrian22]

And has gone no further in almost 60 years

[olddustytrail]

> Because every s-curve looks like an exponent for those in the start.

No, it looks like an exponential all the way to the top of the curve. And the natural reaction when you consider it an s-curve is to think you're near the top. Unfortunately near the top looks exactly the same as near the bottom, so you might consider that you're nowhere near the top and that there's no reason you should be.

Then you go on to speculate about tech that didn't exist 3 years ago and extrapolate 75 years in the future.

No one has any idea what we'll have in 10 years time never mind 75. Even linearly, it's like someone from 1950 trying to guess about 2025.