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

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 c...