AI debate: limited software headroom means intelligence scales with compute, not cleverness
oecolamp · x · 2026-10-07
In a reply to Josh Purtell, oecolamp argues there's a fairly limited set of software optimizations available for AI — otherwise animal intelligence wouldn't correlate so strongly with neuron count, since evolution is the best optimizer. He adds that how this maps to silicon and how close we are to peak software optimization is anyone's guess.
The exchange touches the ongoing "software-only takeoff" debate: whether algorithmic creativity can substitute for scale.
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