AI Impacts

Penicillin and historic syphilis trends

Penicillin did not precipitate a discontinuity of more than ten years in deaths from syphilis in the US. Nor were there other discontinuities in that trend between 1916 and 2015. The number of syphilis cases

Historic trends in the maximum superconducting temperature

The maximum superconducting temperature of any material up to 1993 contained four greater than 10-year discontinuities: A 14-year discontinuity with NbN in 1941, a 26-year discontinuity with LaBaCuO4 in 1986, a 140-year discontinuity with YBa2Cu3O7

Historic trends in chess AI

The Elo rating of the best chess program measured by the Swedish Chess Computer Association did not contain any greater than 10-year discontinuities between 1984 and 2018. A four year discontinuity in 2008 was notable

Effect of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin on historic trends in cotton ginning

We estimate that Eli Whitney’s cotton gin represented a 10 to 25 year discontinuity in pounds of cotton ginned per person per day, in 1793. Two innovations in 1747 and 1788 look like discontinuities of

Historic trends in flight airspeed records

Flight airspeed records between 1903 and 1976 contained one greater than 10-year discontinuity: a 19-year discontinuity corresponding to the Fairey Delta 2 flight in 1956. The average annual growth in flight airspeed markedly increased with

Comparison of naturally evolved and engineered solutions

This page describes a project that is in progress, and does not yet have results We are comparing naturally evolved and engineered solutions to problems, to learn about regularities that might let us make inferences

Walsh 2017 survey

Toby Walsh surveyed hundreds of experts and non-experts in 2016 and found their median estimates for ‘when a computer might be able to carry out most human professions at least as well as a typical

Conversation with Adam Gleave

AI Impacts talked to AI safety researcher Adam Gleave about his views on AI risk. With his permission, we have transcribed this interview. Contents ParticipantsSummaryTranscript Participants Adam Gleave — PhD student at the Center for

Historic trends in ship size

This page may be out-of-date. Visit the updated version of this page on our wiki. Trends for ship tonnage (builder’s old measurement) and ship displacement for Royal Navy first rate line-of-battle ships saw eleven and

Effects of breech loading rifles on historic trends in firearm progress

Published Feb 7 2020 We do not know if breech loading rifles represented a discontinuity in military strength. They probably did not represent a discontinuity in fire rate. Contents DetailsBackgroundTrendsFiring rateOther metricsNotes Details This case