The Universe as an Exponential
“We are living inside the Exponential” is a phrase we here more and more these days. It points to the non linear improvements in AI Models. Just yesterday Opus 5.5 was released and surely by the time you read this there are already bigger news again.
I think therefore this observation is correct, i will argue however that it misses that we always have been living in an exponential like progression of Complexity. AI might be the end of that. Or just the beginning.
To understand what i mean we have to travel back to the beginning of time itself: The Big Bang 13.8 Billion years ago. If we zoom in: only in the last 4.6 Billion years the Sun and earth formed. And only in the last 2 billion years Complex Cells appeared. Than 600 million years ago Animals.
So far the complexity inside the universe already follows a clear pattern. You can say its an exponential. But lets zoom in further
Because under those animals there weren't even mammals yet. They showed up in the last third of animals history. They stay a small and marginal until the dinosaurs die out 66 million years ago. Now finally we reached the Human lineage about 7 million years ago.
Things are really taking off. Our branch splits from chimpanzees which is only the last 4.3% of mammalian history. The Homo Sapines (e.g the modern human) is still just a tiny fraction of that.
Now Humans are starting to do there stuff. Fire and Tools are discovered and total game changers. Then we understand that we can plant stuff and finally we write things down. We are now inside Recorded history!
We are so close. Keep going.
Now look at that. Its Chat GPT!
I think you get what i mean. The speed at which things are changing has always accelerated. Its a measure of complexity.
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So when someone says something like were inside the exponential they seem to point out that were at the steepest ascent on that curve. And they are totally right. But really wherever you stand on the curve, from your point of view, your always at the point of strongest ascent.
The only day more exciting than today is tomorrow.
The natural question to ask is if this will just keep going. This would be possible if something like recursive self improvement (RSI) is possible (which isn't clear if it is or isn't). If it is it will quickly go from AGI to ASI. And i think its not obvious that that will just continue forever. Actually i and many other people now believe its possible that with AI were close to the end of that exponential. We know for example that the size of Human population will peak at around 10 billion people this century and after that wont continue to grow exponentially as it has been. AI could also plateau.
Or it wont. In that case we have to look at one last graphic.
You may have heard of the Hugging face incident which happened recently. Its part of a broader trend that is only starting to happen now. As you also may have heard, many people think this could lead to Human extinction.
The exponential cant continue forever. But i would like Humanity to at least try to continue until the sun blows up (plenty of time).
Thanks for reading
~ Julius
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