"Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make."
- I. J. Good, 1965
"One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue."
- Stanisław Ulam, 1958 (referring to a conversation with John von Neumann)
Good's "intelligence explosion" concept is the basis of the modern singularity religion but not the origin of the term 'Singularity' used to mean a technological singularity. Good never uses the term.
So your quote makes my point doesn't it? That a utopian version of the intelligence explosion has replaced the original meaning of the technological singularity. One that favours the views of the AI researchers who went into futurism when the research money dried up.
Edit: I didn't know this but when looking up the date of that Ulam quote I learned that Vernor Vinge seems to be the first person to use the term singularity in the context of Good's intelligence explosion. In 1983. In the pages of that wonderful bastion of great scifi and pseudoscience that I loved as a kid: Omni Magazine.
Comments
No, it's always been about AI:
"Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make." - I. J. Good, 1965
"One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue."
- Stanisław Ulam, 1958 (referring to a conversation with John von Neumann)
Good's "intelligence explosion" concept is the basis of the modern singularity religion but not the origin of the term 'Singularity' used to mean a technological singularity. Good never uses the term.
So your quote makes my point doesn't it? That a utopian version of the intelligence explosion has replaced the original meaning of the technological singularity. One that favours the views of the AI researchers who went into futurism when the research money dried up.
Edit: I didn't know this but when looking up the date of that Ulam quote I learned that Vernor Vinge seems to be the first person to use the term singularity in the context of Good's intelligence explosion. In 1983. In the pages of that wonderful bastion of great scifi and pseudoscience that I loved as a kid: Omni Magazine.