I'm fairly skeptical of a near-term singularity, but he provided no evidence that technical growth isn't exponential. Exponential doesn't mean "fast". He established that problems that were once impossible are still very difficult.
Economic growth is faster than exponential. We see increasingly rapid growth at any point in time: pre-Cambrian vs. post-Cambrian evolutionary, pre-mammalian vs. mammalian, evolutionary vs. paleolithic, pre-agrarian vs. agrarian, agrarian vs. industrial.
I don't think we're going to see a "Singularity" in 2045. We might see 10-50% annual economic growth by then. That wouldn't surprise me. At this point, we're probably making serious in-roads on a wide variety of health problems, and life expectancy at birth will probably be over 85 and may be undefined. I think it's a good bet that someone born in 2045 will see 3000, not because of a Singularity, but because such a person won't even begin to experience old age until the 22nd century.
Student of Applied Mathematics - Economics here. I took a class with Oded Galor, the primary proponent of Unified growth theory [1], a single model that describes the transition from the Maltusian trap [2] to an era of rapid growth, and finally a transition to a sustained growth regime. According to this economic growth model, the United States has already reached the sustained growth regime - meaning that we can expect continued growth of, say, 1-2% for eternity.
Economic growth is NOT faster than exponential in a sustained growth steady-state. Do some googling for long-term economic forecasts, and you will find much research that supports low single-percent growth for the 21st century [3]
Economic growth is faster than exponential. We see increasingly rapid growth at any point in time: pre-Cambrian vs. post-Cambrian evolutionary, pre-mammalian vs. mammalian, evolutionary vs. paleolithic, pre-agrarian vs. agrarian, agrarian vs. industrial.
I don't think we're going to see a "Singularity" in 2045. We might see 10-50% annual economic growth by then. That wouldn't surprise me. At this point, we're probably making serious in-roads on a wide variety of health problems, and life expectancy at birth will probably be over 85 and may be undefined. I think it's a good bet that someone born in 2045 will see 3000, not because of a Singularity, but because such a person won't even begin to experience old age until the 22nd century.