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Comment by doctoboggan

5 hours ago

Have you ever heard someone say “pace yourself” when you are eating too fast or otherwise rushing too much?

That's a different phrase. "Pace yourself" is reflexive; "pacing the frontier" has the frontier as an object, but in that sense it only means to set the speed, nothing to do with slowing down.

  • Yes, the word simply means to set the speed.

    The current situation with AI is that everyone is going as fast as possible. So, we can logically eliminate speeding up because it's impossible by definition. And we can practically eliminate staying the same speed because why make a big fanfare and coin a special term to announce that you're keeping the status quo. By process of elimination, it must mean slowing down.

    • The word can also mean to “keep up with” or “lead” so a downward direction isn’t the only way to go even in an “as fast as possible” scenario. If the frontier is outpacing them, they could be saying they’re going to go faster. They could also be sharing the intention to go faster in order to lead.