Recent AI model progress feels mostly like bullshit

I have my own opinions, but I can't really say that they're not also based on anecdotes and personal decision-making heuristics.

But some of us are going to end up right and some of us are going to end up wrong and I'm really curious what features signal an ability to make "better choices" w/r/t AI, even if we don't know (or can't prove) what "better" is yet.

There are three questions to consider:

a) Have we, without any reasonable doubt, hit a wall for AI development? Emphasis on "reasonable doubt". There is no reasonable doubt that the Earth is roughly spherical. That level of certainty.

b) Depending on your answer for (a), the next question to consider is if we the humans have motivations to continue developing AI.

c) And then the last question: will AI continue improving?

If taken as boolean values, (a), (b) and (c) have a truth table with eight values, the most interesting row being false, true, true: "(not a) and b => c". Note the implication sign, "=>". Give some values to (a) and (b), and you get a value for (c).

There are more variables you can add to your formula, but I'll abstain from giving any silly examples. I, however, think that the row (false, true, false) implied by many commentators is just fear and denial. Fear is justified, but denial doesn't help.