AI Impacts 2020 review

Published Dec 21, 2020

This is a list of work done at AI Impacts published in 2020.

Major projects

Discontinuities project

Primary authors: Katja Grace, Richard Korzekwa, Asya Bergal, Daniel Kokotajlo
Main page: Discontinuous progress investigation
Blog post: Discontinuous progress in history: an update

Other pages added in 2020: Effect of AlexNet on historic trends in image recognition, Historic trends in transatlantic message speed, Historic trends in long-range military payload delivery, Historic trends in bridge span length, Historic trends in light intensity, Historic trends in book production, Historic trends in telecommunications performance, Historic trends in slow light technology, Penicillin and historic syphilis trends, Historic trends in the maximum superconducting temperature, Historic trends in chess AI, Effect of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin on historic trends in cotton ginning, Historic trends in flight airspeed records

Evolution engineering comparison

Primary authors: Ronny Fernandez
Main page: How energy efficient are human-engineered flight designs relative to natural ones?

Other pages added in 2020: Energy efficiency of monarch butterfly flight, Energy efficiency of wandering albatross flight, Energy efficiency of paramotors, Energy efficiency of The Spirit of Butt’s Farm, Energy efficiency of MacCready Gossamer Albatross, Energy efficiency of Boeing 747-400, Energy efficiency of Airbus A320, Energy efficiency of North American P-51 Mustang, Energy efficiency of Vickers Vimy plane, Energy efficiency of Wright model B, Energy efficiency of Wright Flyer

Time to cross human performance range

Primary authors: Richard Korzekwa
Pages added in 2020:

Historic hardware trends

Primary authors: Asya Bergal
Pages added in 2020:

Interviews on plausibility of AI safety by default

Primary authors: Asya Bergal, Robert Long
Main page: Interviews on plausibility of AI safety by default
Blog post: Takeaways from safety by default interviews

Shallow survey of prescient actions

Primary authors: Richard Korzekwa
Main page: Preliminary survey of prescient actions

Other work

Pages added in 2020

Blog posts added in 2020


We welcome suggestions for this page or anything on the site via our feedback box, though will not address all of them.