One of the most interesting things to me about digging deeply into the machine intelligence space is how many people are skeptical about its promises. I have discussed the future of A.I. with countless people who believe that machines will never be sentient, and that A.I. has a history of failed promises and overhyped technology. And I agree that it does. But whatever happened in the past doesn't say that much about the future, when it comes to technology.
Think about this - no one has been able to come up with a widely accepted argument demonstrating why it is impossible to build a sentient machine. As best we understand from everything we know, it should be entirely possible. What most people believe is that the promises of such intelligence machines are a long, long, long, way off. What these people ignore though, is that fast rates of change can have sudden impacts when they reach scale.
I often discuss this in the context of the lilypad problem. You may have encountered the question in an IQ test somewhere, but what it basically says is something like this:
The number of lilypads on a pond double every day. It takes 30 days from the start for the pond to be fully covered in lilypads. On what day is half the pond covered in lilypads?
Many people mistakenly put 15 days as the answer, but the real answer is 29 days. Think about it from the perspective that you were put in charge of warning the lake owners of any problems with the lake, and filling up with lilypads is considered a problem. You watch the lilypads grow, doubling every day, but the doubling is so small that for at least the first 25 days, you aren't concerned at all. After 25 days, the lilypads will cover less than 4% of the pond. Then suddenly, around day 27 or 28, you start to notice a lot of lilypads. On day 29 half the pond is covered and on day 30 it is too late. Assuming you waiting until day 27 or 28 to notify the pond owners, who lived far away, and needed a few days to come investigate... well, its too late. The pond is covered.
I expect the same thing to happen with real human level generalized A.I. While progress becomes increasingly rapid, commentators will point out that despite this or that new milestone, we are still sooooo far away. And by many metrics, we will be. But being far away doesn't mean we aren't on pace to rapidly close that gap. Someday, after a decade of rapid progress but tons of naysayers, there will be a brief 12-18 month period where people start to realize A.I. is moving incredibly fast and is really getting close, and as we are just starting to have the public debate about whether or not we can build sentient machines, it will move right by us and there will no longer be any doubt. The only question will be from the vast majority of people who weren't paying attention, wondering how they missed it.
I think there will be multiple billion dollar, and even a few deca-billion dollar companies built in this space. But those companies are companies that are startups now, or will be started in the next few years. That is why I'm focused on angel investing there. The companies who are in the game and properly positioned when the explosion takes place are the ones who will benefit.
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