Does Exponential Compute Mean Exponential Intelligence? Tom Davidson and Ramez Clash Over Intelligence Explosion

connoraxiotes · x · 2026-09-29

A substantive debate between researcher Tom Davidson and Ramez Naim on whether growing compute leads to an intelligence explosion.

Ramez's objection: Epoch's r>1 evidence covers computational efficiency, not intelligence; compute-to-capability scaling is steeply sub-linear, so the feedback loop via more agents would see roughly logarithmic diminishing returns.
Davidson's rebuttal: The common claim that exponentially growing compute yields only linearly growing intelligence rests on vibes-based intelligence measurements — e.g., equating GPT-2→GPT-3 with GPT-3→GPT-4, or treating each 10% benchmark gain as equivalent.
He argues the better yardstick is AI's economic value-add: as training compute grew exponentially, so have AI revenues — implying exponential compute yields exponential intelligence. Even impoverished RSI models that only count efficiency improvements predict an intelligence explosion, he notes.

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