[ExI] Limiting factors of intelligence explosion speeds

[Anders Sandberg]

One of the things that struck me during our Winter Intelligence workshop 
on intelligence explosions was how confident some people were about the 
speed of recursive self-improvement of AIs, brain emulation collectivies 
or economies. Some thought it was going to be fast in comparision to 
societal adaptation and development timescales (creating a winner takes 
all situation), some thought it would be slow enough for multiple 
superintelligent agents to emerge. This issue is at the root of many key 
questions about the singularity (one superintelligence or many? how much 
does friendliness matter?)

It would be interesting to hear this list's take on it: what do you 
think is the key limiting factor for how fast intelligence can amplify 
itself?

Some factors that have been mentioned in past discussions:
    Economic growth rate
    Investment availability
    Gathering of empirical information (experimentation, interacting 
with an environment)
    Software complexity
    Hardware demands vs. available hardvare
    Bandwidth
    Lightspeed lags

Clearly many more can be suggested. But which bottlenecks are the most 
limiting, and how can this be ascertained?

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute 
James Martin 21st Century School 
Philosophy Faculty 
Oxford University