Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work - the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection.

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

It is a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules.

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity.

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence.

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

IA is something that is proceeding very naturally, in most cases not even recognized by its developers for what it is.

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

Note that I am not proposing that AI research be ignored or less funded.

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of the humans' natural competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology.

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadly light.

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

When people speak of creating superhumanly intelligent beings, they are usually imagining an AI project.

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view?

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors.

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace.

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

When I began writing science fiction in the middle '60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months.

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I were regarding these transcendental events from one thousand years remove... instead of twenty.

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

In fact, there was general agreement that minds can exist on nonbiological substrates and that algorithms are of central importance to the existence of minds.

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.

Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge

But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence.