Boffins fear we might be running out of ideas
A new article appeared claiming that it now takes more scientists to continue Moore's law than it did years ago. The article claims research is not as effective as it used to be. The article claims ideas are harder to find and an idea drought is taking place.
The boffins observe that exponential growth is getting harder to achieve because we have to double our research efforts every 13 years in order to maintain constant expansion.
This applies beyond the semiconductor industry. The authors found that research productivity for agricultural crop yields are declining at a rate of about 5 per cent annually, and noted a comparable rate of decline in the mortality improvements associated with cancer and heart disease.
Does this article also consider that people are reproducing and that in 13 years there are also going to be more people? It is possible there could be more scientists in 13 years to make up for the fact that creating new semiconductors is becoming harder. Crowd mechanisms can also take effect so that perhaps it wont matter how many people were involved in coming up with the new idea or doing the research? In away I see the article as being a bit biased and having assumptions built in.
They do make a point that it will cost more resources to get the same level of progress going into the future. I would think this is going to be unavoidable at least until AI becomes a game changer. AI may have the effect of dramatic productivity increases in many areas which we cannot yet predict so it's extremely difficult to speculate on future productivity.