TL8 Computing

[AlexanderHowl]

My parents had a 286 back in 1989. It had around 1 MB of memory and 40 MB of storage. I bought my current laptop in 2014, it has 32 GB of memory and 1.25 TB of storage. The difference in a quarter century is more than 10,000x. When it comes to transistors, there is a similar difference, so my laptop possesses +4 Complexity over my parent's old 286 in GURPS lingo, and it did not cost that much more when I bought it (adjusted for inflation).

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

My parents had a 286 back in 1989. It had around 1 MB of memory and 40 MB of storage. I bought my current laptop in 2014, it has 32 GB of memory and 1.25 TB of storage. The difference in a quarter century is more than 10,000x. When it comes to transistors, there is a similar difference, so my laptop possesses +4 Complexity .

<shrug> As I said, the numbers are meaningless for gaming purposes. Let me ask you something. Do you really think that we could run a Human-Equivalent AI on a computer as weak as the ones that Ultratech would allow?

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

My parents had a 286 back in 1989. It had around 1 MB of memory and 40 MB of storage. I bought my current laptop in 2014, it has 32 GB of memory and 1.25 TB of storage. The difference in a quarter century is more than 10,000x. When it comes to transistors, there is a similar difference, so my laptop possesses +4 Complexity over my parent's old 286 in GURPS lingo, and it did not cost that much more when I bought it (adjusted for inflation).

Complexity is not just "how many powers of ten bigger the numbers are". "Each Complexity level represents roughly a tenfold increase in overall capability over the previous level." (B472).

In particular, it does not consider storage - storage is a separate stat, and although in HT and UT it's is related to Complexity, it isn't fixed to it.

Note that it makes certain assumptions about what software is built into the computer or its OS that are obviously simplifications - not all TL8 computers have had the capability to plug a mic into them and then be able to record without needing extra software and even hardware, for example.

One of the things that irks me about modern computers and the modern internet is that, despite having a connection that's over a thousand times as fast and a computer that's slowest part (the main bus) has a throughput over ten times that of my pentium-133 I had in 1996, for many general computing purposes I get the same performance as I did then. Pictures download much faster, but pages often don't render that much faster because of all the junk on them. Word processors somehow manage to not do things more crisply despite all the extra power and memory. The vastly greater screen resolution is nice though (as is having it on a screen that doesn't weigh as much as a small person), but I've been able to watch DVD-quality video for 15-20 years now, and most of the time that's as much resolution as you need.

Our applications seem to grow to fill the available capacity, even when they don't need to and should not.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

<shrug> As I said, the numbers are meaningless for gaming purposes. Let me ask you something. Do you really think that we could run a Human-Equivalent AI on a computer as weak as the ones that Ultratech would allow?

UT says that for a fully Volitional AI of IQ10 you need (10/5)+3 = Complexity 8.

HT tells us that at TL8 this is a Fast Megacomputer, costing $200 million. The software is relatively cheap - $300K if commercially available. Of course, if it's a one-off only one of it's kind piece, it could've cost hundreds of millions to develop.

At TL9 you need a macroframe costing $1M, and at TL10 a microframe for $10K will do. At TL12 the small computer in your tablet can run that AI, as can a high-end (i.e. fast) tiny implant.

I'm not sure that these are actually weak computers, and note that to run a mind emulation takes another level of complexity.

[GodBeastX]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

<shrug> As I said, the numbers are meaningless for gaming purposes. Let me ask you something. Do you really think that we could run a Human-Equivalent AI on a computer as weak as the ones that Ultratech would allow?

Ultratech allows quantum computing and many performancy levels above our current tech.

Yes, I fully believe we can.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Rupert

UT says that for a fully Volitional AI of IQ10 you need (10/5)+3 = Complexity 8.

HT tells us that at TL8 this is a Fast Megacomputer, costing $200 million. The software is relatively cheap - $300K if commercially available. Of course, if it's a one-off only one of it's kind piece, it could've cost hundreds of millions to develop.

At TL9 you need a macroframe costing $1M, and at TL10 a microframe for $10K will do. At TL12 the small computer in your tablet can run that AI, as can a high-end (i.e. fast) tiny implant.

I'm not sure that these are actually weak computers,.

But they are if you go by numbers. Powerful for a computer by modern standards sure...but weak for a brain.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

<shrug> As I said, the numbers are meaningless for gaming purposes. Let me ask you something. Do you really think that we could run a Human-Equivalent AI on a computer as weak as the ones that Ultratech would allow?

Yes? While the brain isn't structured much like a modern computer, its raw computing power does not appear to be all that high.

[AlexanderHowl]

Considering that we have several thousand computers that are the equivalent of Fast Megacomputers by GURPS standards, we should have an Emergent AI by now if it was possible with our current technology. I would suggest that we are probably decades (if not centuries) away from an Emergent AI, though it is really impossible to say since we do not know what we do not know.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

My parents had a 286 back in 1989. It had around 1 MB of memory and 40 MB of storage. I bought my current laptop in 2014, it has 32 GB of memory and 1.25 TB of storage. The difference in a quarter century is more than 10,000x. When it comes to transistors, there is a similar difference, so my laptop possesses +4 Complexity over my parent's old 286 in GURPS lingo, and it did not cost that much more when I bought it (adjusted for inflation).

Ever notice that in UT storage goes up by 1000x per TL? You're less than +2 Complexity ahead by that measure and it's probably an incorrect measure at that.

Complexity really does not match any particular real world number.

[AlexanderHowl]

Complexity is defined as a 10x increase in capabilities for each +1 increase, which is a quantifiable measure. I am suggesting that the progression of computing in TL8 was greater than suggested. My parent's old 286 is an early TL8 computer while my laptop is a late TL8 computer, and the difference is over 10,000x (memory, storage, transistors, etc), suggesting a +4 increase in Complexity since GURPS gave us a quantifiable measure.