A 1970s AI memo on compute scarcity reads exactly like today's scaling debate
akbirthko · x · 2026-10-12
Sharing a page from a 1970s-era AI memo titled "Bombast": compute shortage was already distorting the field back then, wishful thinking and funding fears kept people from saying compute was inadequate, and scientific snobbery dismissed intelligence as an engineering problem of scale in favor of a physics-like quest for universal laws. The poster uses it to argue modern LLM's "ugly" manufacturing pipeline is fine — superintelligence progress will feel like exponentially faster cud-chewing with occasional swallowing.
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