The Intelligence Explosion (extended abstract)

Anna Salamon, Singularity Institute of Artificial Intelligence
Nick Bostrom, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University

The Intelligence Explosion: Evidence and Import

In this century, broadly human-level artificial intelligence may be created[1][2][4][7][12]. Shortly thereafter, we may see what I.J. Good termed an “intelligence explosion” -- a chain of events by which human-comparable artificial intelligence leads, fairly rapidly, to artificially intelligent systems whose capabilities far surpass those of biological humanity as a whole. [5]

We aim to sketch, as briefly as possible: (1) what assumptions might make an “intelligence explosion” plausible; (2) what empirical evidence supports these assumptions; and (3) why it matters.

Human intelligence, superintelligence, and intelligence explosion (Alan Turing)

Jack Copland holds (Alan Turing and the Origins of AI) that the earliest substantial work in artificial intelligence was done by the Turing. His vision of machine learning, articulated as early as 1951, is a case in Copeland's point:

If the machine were able in some way to 'learn by experience'... there seems to be no real reason why one should not start from a comparatively simple machine, and, by subjecting it to a suitable range of experience, transform it into one which was more elaborate, and was able to deal with a far greater range of contingencies. ['Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory' BBC 1951]

May we also find in Turing's work his opinion about the the prospects of 'human-level' machine intelligence, superintelligence, and even a process akin to an intelligence explosion?

I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted. ['Computing Machinery and Intelligence' Mind 1950]