Anders Sandberg and Danielle Fong debate why simple progress models eventually break down
anderssandberg · x · 2026-11-08
In an exchange with Danielle Fong, futurist Anders Sandberg argues that complex multi-part models rarely help explain strategic points: he once considered a model with internal bottlenecks but found Amdahl's law—a powerful slowdown factor—invisible in early exponentials (per his 'sigmoids misbehaving' paper). Fong counters that over half of progress work is interfacing with human civilization, our weakest link, and simplified progress models will eventually give way to multi-dimensional ones—AI itself already has trillions of parameters.
Related event: Sandberg and Fong Debate How to Model Progress(4 posts)→
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