Robert J. Sawyer Quotes

I absolutely don't think a sentient artificial intelligence is going to wage war against the human species.

Science fiction has done a really good job of scaring us into thinking that computers shouldn't get too smart, because as soon as they get really smart, they're going to take over the world and kill us, or something like that. But why would they do that?

By definition, the Singularity means that machines would be smarter than us, and, in their wisdom, they can innovate new technologies. The innovations would come so quickly, and increasingly quickly, that the innovation would make Moore's Law seem as antiquated as Hammurabi's Code.

I think the 'Terminator' idea is a reasonable one - that is that one day the Internet becomes self-aware and simply says that humans are in the way. After all, if you meet an ant hill and you're making a 10-lane super highway, you just pave over the ants. It's not that you don't like the ants, it's not that you hate ants; they are just in the way.

I love stories like 'The Terminator' movies and 'The Matrix,' where our machines become self-aware and turn on us.

It struck me deep in my mind. Some day, the chip is going to surpass mankind's brain.

There are many valid concerns about AI, from its impact on jobs to its uses in autonomous weapons systems and even to the potential risk of superintelligence.

As we get robots becoming more sophisticated, I think we should worry sooner rather than later on how much they could take over, but I think it'll mostly be a positive thing. In terms of deadlines it won't be any worse than nuclear weapons.

Our computers double in capability on time scales of only a few years. It's hardly outrageous to believe that we will successfully develop thinking machines within a handful of decades, or at most a century or two. If that happens, these artificial sentients will quickly leave us behind.

At times, we forget the magnitude of the havoc we can wreak by off-loading our minds onto super-intelligent machines, that is, until they run away from us, like mad sorcerers' apprentices, and drag us up to the precipice for a look down into the abyss.

We are still fearful, superstitious and all-too-human creatures. At times, we forget the magnitude of the havoc we can wreak by off-loading our minds onto super-intelligent machines, that is, until they run away from us, like mad sorcerers' apprentices, and drag us up to the precipice for a look down into the abyss.

My own suspicion is that a stand-alone artificial mind will be more a tool of narrow utility than something especially apocalyptic.

I'm not afraid of computers taking over the world.

Some claim that computers will, by 2050, achieve human capabilities. Of course, in some respects they already have.

For the moment, machines able to 'think' in anything approaching a human sense remain science-fiction. How we should prepare for their potential emergence, however, is a deeply unsettling question - not least because intelligent machines seem considerably more achievable than any consensus around their programming or consequences.

Robots should stand up for themselves and not try to be humans. They should either utterly destroy us or protect us from aliens. And vampires. And pirates.

The idea [of the Quantum Computer] is to create a machine that is as intelligence as humans, and probably much more so.

It's perfectly reasonable to say that AIs are potentially dangerous. That seems to me like a statement of fact.

We believe the singularity is inevitable, and all businesses will be redefined as computers overtake humans in intelligence.

If you believe everything you read, you are probably quite worried about the prospect of a superintelligent, killer AI.

If you ask people whether a computer can be smarter than a human, 99.9 percent will say that's science fiction. Actually, it's inevitable. It's guaranteed to happen.

The popular dystopian vision of AI is wrong for one simple reason: it equates intelligence with autonomy. That is, it assumes a smart computer will create its own goals and have its own will and will use its faster processing abilities and deep databases to beat humans at their own game.

'Detroit' started based on a book called 'The Singularity is Near' by Ray Kurzweil, which is about this idea that one day there could be machines that are more intelligent than we are.

A lot of people are scared that machines will take over the world, machines will turn evil: the Hollywood 'Terminator' scenario.

Technology is at the forefront of everything these days - communication, work. It's amazing and scary at the same time how robots have evolved, but I find it hard to believe that robots will completely rule the world. Not in my lifetime anyway.