What are the big advances in linear programming that happened since 1988?
As api mentions in the comments here on HN there are areas of work where progress stopped. For example passenger jet speed was once thought to continue at a rapid rate such that LA to Europe flights would be a few hours. Skyscraper height was thought to continue, with advances in various technologies and engineering methods making it desirable. Both hit realities that signficantly slowed down their progress.
I tend to side with Allen on this. While we're bright people, I don't know if I see us able to keep increasing computing power while keeping actual power consumption reasonably low.
Hmmm? Generally agree with the plane flight example, but linear programming seems like a surprisingly bad example to pick. Karmarkar's algorithm has allowed the essential insight of linear programming to be generalized into a programme for optimizing any convex function, subject to convex constraints, over a convex set (see Stanford's EE364).
I assume you are familiar with this as 1988 = date of Fulkerson prize for Karmarkar's work? I guess the point narrowly holds if you're thinking of pure LP rather than general CP. But general CP is really quite a big deal.
What passenger jet speed and skyscrapers really hit is economics: demand limits to growth.
Most super-tall skyscrapers are economic disasters. There seems to be a maximum economically rational height to a skyscraper, and it's already been reached. You can build higher, but if you do you're wasting your money.
A human-level or beyond AI would probably be like the Burj Khalifa: an economic disaster. Why build it when screwing and popping out babies is far cheaper and already works? If you want to exceed human intelligence, it would be a lot cheaper to augment human brains with external digital assistants (like what you're using now) or implants than to re-engineer an entirely new embodiment.
The super tall skyscrapers are indeed an economical disaster in them selves, but they skyrocket the value of the surrounding land. The Saudi Prince who's building the Kingdom Tower owns a considerable amount of land around the building site so he'll make a lot of money off the land he sells. It kind of reminds me of how Google makes money with adverting on their free products.
As api mentions in the comments here on HN there are areas of work where progress stopped. For example passenger jet speed was once thought to continue at a rapid rate such that LA to Europe flights would be a few hours. Skyscraper height was thought to continue, with advances in various technologies and engineering methods making it desirable. Both hit realities that signficantly slowed down their progress.
I tend to side with Allen on this. While we're bright people, I don't know if I see us able to keep increasing computing power while keeping actual power consumption reasonably low.