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S-curves and diminishing returns

Most growth slows as it matures; the question is whether the curve is flattening or something new is restocking it.

Our reading of the idea · 8 claims from 8 people, in their own words

Who thinks with this

Michael NielsenDavid Heinemeier HanssonFrançois CholletGary MarcusIlya SutskeverJason CohenJosé Luis RicónSundar Pichai

Every scientific field eventually exhausts itself: progress within a paradigm follows an S-curve and then runs out.

  1. José Luis Ricón Engineer and writer at Nintil A given field or paradigm will yield a sigmoid-like pattern and eventually it will be exhausted. Science — The Ending and Endless Frontier(s)nintil.com · 20 Jun 2020All korrents from this piece
    A given field or paradigm will yield a sigmoid-like pattern and eventually it will be exhausted.

Diminishing returns in science is a snapshot illusion: somebody keeps restocking the table, and new fields make progress easy again.

  1. Michael Nielsen Physicist, writer and researcher if somebody, you know, is standing behind the dessert table and is replenishing, restocking the desserts and keeps kind of you know, adding adding new ones in, it may turn out that you know, a little bit later a much better desserts appear. Michael Nielsen – Why aliens will have a different tech stack than usyoutube.com · 7 Apr 2026 · 1:00:16 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    if somebody, you know, is standing behind the dessert table and is replenishing, restocking the desserts and keeps kind of you know, adding adding new ones in, it may turn out that you know, a little bit later a much better desserts appear.

    Watch from 1:00:16 plays here

    ↗Michael Nielsen – Why aliens will have a different tech stack than usyoutube.com

    7 Apr 2026 · video · 2h 03m · spoken · machine transcript

Diminishing returns in research are not intrinsic to the world: they are what you get when the institutions around research stop changing.

  1. Michael Nielsen Physicist, writer and researcher If you're not changing it, if there's some kind of stagnation there, if you're not changing those external sort of circumstances, yes, like you may start to get sort of diminishing returns again. But that doesn't mean there's anything intrinsic about the situation. Michael Nielsen – Why aliens will have a different tech stack than usyoutube.com · 7 Apr 2026 · 1:20:56 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    If you're not changing it, if there's some kind of stagnation there, if you're not changing those external sort of circumstances, yes, like you may start to get sort of diminishing returns again. But that doesn't mean there's anything intrinsic about the situation.

    Watch from 1:20:56 plays here

    ↗Michael Nielsen – Why aliens will have a different tech stack than usyoutube.com

    7 Apr 2026 · video · 2h 03m · spoken · machine transcript

Marketing channels do not settle onto a plateau; after the S-curve they sag, which is why the shape is an elephant and not an S.

  1. Jason Cohen Founder of WP Engine and Smart Bear But that's not what happens. What happens is it starts with an S-curve and then it starts sagging. Its butt starts sagging down. So, I wrote an article about this called the elephant curve, which is what I named it, right? The surprising advice from a founder who built 2 unicorns | Jason Cohen (WP Engine)youtube.com · 25 Jan 2026 · 1:08:19 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    But that's not what happens. What happens is it starts with an S-curve and then it starts sagging. Its butt starts sagging down. So, I wrote an article about this called the elephant curve, which is what I named it, right?

A million copies of one researcher would hit diminishing returns quickly, because what research needs is people who think differently.

  1. Ilya Sutskever Co-founder and chief scientist of Safe Superintelligence Inc. I think I think there'll definitely be there'll be diminishing returns because you want you want people who think differently rather than the same. I think that if they were literal copies of me, I'm not sure how much more incremental value you'd get. Ilya Sutskever – We're moving from the age of scaling to the age of researchyoutube.com · 25 Nov 2025 · 1:29:00 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    I think I think there'll definitely be there'll be diminishing returns because you want you want people who think differently rather than the same. I think that if they were literal copies of me, I'm not sure how much more incremental value you'd get.

The LLM line of research will reach a capability plateau.

  1. Gary Marcus Cognitive scientist, professor emeritus of psychology… But this particular approach has limits that are clearer by the day. A knockout blow for LLMs?garymarcus.substack.com · 7 Jun 2025All korrents from this piece
    But this particular approach has limits that are clearer by the day.
  2. François Chollet Creator of the Keras deep-learning library and the ARC-AGI benchmark In the era of base LLM scaling (2022-2024), I believed the LLM line of research would reach a capability plateau (as later seen with base LLMs). In late 2024, after the o3 test-time compute demo, I changed my views: the new models were showing genuine fluid intelligence, and with this new line of work, the LLM line of research could achieve unbounded capability scaling. "There will be no wall." @fchollet on Xx.com · 7 Aug 2026

    In the era of base LLM scaling (2022-2024), I believed the LLM line of research would reach a capability plateau (as later seen with base LLMs). In late 2024, after the o3 test-time compute demo, I changed my views: the new models were showing genuine fluid intelligence, and with this new line of work, the LLM line of research could achieve unbounded capability scaling. "There will be no wall."

Large language models could still plateau, and that possibility should be held open even though no evidence of it has appeared.

  1. David Heinemeier Hansson Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals So we should also have the humility. As amazing as the LLMs are now, it could be that they eventually plateau. We haven't seen any evidence of it yet, and I think this is also why we're seeing this absolute gobsmacking levels of investment, because so far the scaling laws are true, and the more billions are poured in, the more intelligence comes out. DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com · 26 Aug 2026 · 4:08:53 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    So we should also have the humility. As amazing as the LLMs are now, it could be that they eventually plateau. We haven't seen any evidence of it yet, and I think this is also why we're seeing this absolute gobsmacking levels of investment, because so far the scaling laws are true, and the more billions are poured in, the more intelligence comes out.

Scaling laws are still working, but the models people actually use run a few months behind the maximum capability Google can deliver, because the biggest model is too slow and expensive to serve.

  1. Sundar Pichai CEO of Google and Alphabet So I do think scaling laws are working, but it's tough to get, at any given time, the models we all use the most, this maybe a few months behind the maximum capability we can deliver because that won't be the fastest, easiest to use, et cetera. Sundar Pichai: CEO of Google and Alphabet | Lex Fridman Podcast #471youtube.com · 5 Jun 2025 · 0:36:24 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    So I do think scaling laws are working, but it's tough to get, at any given time, the models we all use the most, this maybe a few months behind the maximum capability we can deliver because that won't be the fastest, easiest to use, et cetera.

    Watch from 0:36:24 plays here

    ↗Sundar Pichai: CEO of Google and Alphabet | Lex Fridman Podcast #471youtube.com

    5 Jun 2025 · video · 2h 12m · spoken · official transcript

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