Erik Brynjolfsson Quotes

Technology has advanced more in the last thirty years than in the previous two thousand. The exponential increase in advancement will only continue. Anthropological Commentary The opposite of a trivial truth is false; the opposite of a great truth is also true.

Supercomputers will achieve one human brain capacity by 2010, and personal computers will do so by about 2020.

Computers get better faster than anything else ever.

I'm surprised that VR has come about so quickly. It's lucky I just happened to write a book imagining virtual reality right on the cusp of it actually happening.

I remember mentioning to friends back in 1938 that the world chess champion would be beaten by a computer in 50 years time. Today we know computers are not far from this goal.

Our intuition about the future is linear. But the reality of information technology is exponential, and that makes a profound difference. If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion.

Technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible.

It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.

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.

But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.

Artificial intelligence will reach human levels by around 2029. Follow that out further to, say, 2045, we will have multiplied the intelligence, the human biological machine intelligence of our civilization a billion-fold.

Computers do the calculating to allow people to transform the world.

It is difficult to predict technology more than 10 years out with any certitude, but what I observe is that change and innovation happens earlier and faster than we expect. We are constantly surprised at what technology can do.

Computers are the most powerful tools that humanity has ever created. Yet, we treat them largely as a black box; as if it were an alien artifact that magically appeared on desks, in homes, and in our pockets.

Someday it'll all be done by machine. Information machines.

Machines already are much smarter than us at so many things. I mean, try to multiply two 10-digit numbers with each other or, you know, sift through a thousand documents. So there's lots of things that machines are better at including in mental task than us. There's many more that they're not as good at, but the direction is pretty obvious and the progress is clear.

When I was a student at MIT, we all shared one computer and it took up a whole building. The computer in your cell phone today is a million times cheaper and a thousand times more powerful. What now fits in your pocket 25 years from now will fit into a blood cell and will again be millions of times more cost effective.

Our civilization is experiencing unprecedented changes across many realms, largely due to the rapid advancement of information technology. The ability to code and understand the power of computing is crucial to success in today's hyper-connected world.

Computers get better faster than anything else ever. A child's PlayStation today is more powerful than a military supercomputer from 1996.

As we consider the implications of AI, there is a bright future ahead for countries that invest and participate.

Once computers can program, they basically take over technological progress because already, today, the majority of technological progress is run by software, by programming.

It's only a matter of time before machinery becomes sentient. It's going to happen because we're already slaves to all of it.

As the years went by and technology came in, I used a lot of technology.

Weird how fast technology changes.

We can't stop the development of smarter and smarter artificial intelligences. So our alternative is to make ourselves smarter so that we always stay one step ahead.