Humans Are Not Chinchillas: Revisiting “How Quick and Big Would A Software Intelligence Explosion Be?”

IntroductionTom Davidson and Tom Houlden’s prior model of an intelligence explosion poses the question: after AIs can entirely substitute for human researchers at the task of improving AI, how many year-equivalents of AI progress might be packed into a short period of time solely from further software progress, holding hardware constant?In this article, I build upon Davidson & Houlden’s model by reconsidering arguments for several parameter values. My chief contribution is discussing why some of...