Accelerating Returns and the Qualitative Engine for Science
Ray Kurzweil described a thesis of accelerating returns, which is the most influential narratives in discussions of technological progress. Its central claim is that advances in multiple technological fields, especially compute, artificial intelligence, brain science, and biotechnology, interact in such a way that progress becomes self-amplifying and approximately exponential. This paper gives a simple mathematical interpretation of that claim and then argues that, even if such acceleration is real, it does not by itself resolve the central problem of scientific discovery. The reason is that accelerating returns apply most naturally to executional and infrastructural capability, whereas g...
| Authors | Guojun Liao |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 24 June 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 6 July 2026 |
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