[ExI] My review of Eliezer Yudkowsky's new book

[John Clark]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 8:50 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

* >> I do feel comfortable making one economic prediction, in 9 years the
>> total productivity of this planet will be ENORMOUSLY greater than it is
>> now. But I make no prediction about what will be controlling that
>> astronomically huge newly generated wealth, I hope not but it's entirely
>> possible that in 9 years events will have proven that Eliezer was right.*
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> * > If I cared to wager any significant amount of money (I do not), I
> would bet that the total, inflation-adjusted GDP of humanity and its
> creations (including all revenue generation in our solar system) in 2034
> will be less than 100 times what it was in 2024, as measured by the World
> Bank or similar worldwide financial institutions.*
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*In 2034 I don't think there will be a World Bank and I doubt there will be
any financial institution similar to it. I don't know what there will be,
that's why it's called a singularity. *


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> *> https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-gdp-over-the-long-run?time=1960..latest
> <https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-gdp-over-the-long-run?time=1960..latest>
> shows that 2004-2014 had a roughly 1.4x increase in world GDP, and another
> approximately 1.4x (actually, just above 1.35x) 2014-2024 (granted, that
> includes COVID's downturn).
> https://tradingeconomics.com/world/gdp-ppp-us-dollar-wb-data.html
> <https://tradingeconomics.com/world/gdp-ppp-us-dollar-wb-data.html> says
> 2014-2024 was closer to 1.8x. So...another 1.4x or 1.8x?  Quite probably,
> though the rise in authoritarianism might derail that.*
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*If the AI revolution produced a linear increase in economic productivity
then prediction would be easy, all you need would be a page of plotting
paper and a straight edge. But exponential growth makes things more
complicated.   *

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> * > 2x?  Sure, it could happen. But 100x?  No,*


*I agree, a 100x increase in economic productivity by 2034 is totally
unrealistic, 10,000x would be closer to the mark, but even that may be too
conservative.  *

 >* The Singularity won't be tomorrow.*


*I remember about 20 years ago on this very list I said if the singularity
won't happen for 1000 years then in 999 years it will still seem like a
very long way away to most people because more advancement will happen in
that last year than the previous 999 combined. That's the way things behave
when they become exponential. *

*John K Clark  *




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