Eliezer Yudkowsky Quotes

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

By the 2030s, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will predominate.

The challenge presented by the prospect of superintelligence, and how we might best respond is quite possibly the most important and most daunting challenge humanity has ever faced. And-whether we succeed or fail-it is probably the last challenge we will ever face.

Extending our lives, extending our creativity, opening up the mysteries of the brain. All those things that are really exciting - that's kind of the basis of 'Neon Future,' and that's why I interviewed Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey de Grey.

But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.

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

Anything that could give rise to smarter-than-human intelligence - in the form of Artificial Intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, or neuroscience-based human intelligence enhancement - wins hands down beyond contest as doing the most to change the world. Nothing else is even in the same league.

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.

Some of the 'aha' insights that scientists strive for may have to await the emergence of post-human intellects.

By the time we get to the 2040s, we'll be able to multiply human intelligence a billionfold. That will be a profound change that's singular in nature. Computers are going to keep getting smaller and smaller. Ultimately, they will go inside our bodies and brains and make us healthier, make us smarter.

The idea that the mind can extend even beyond the body is an intriguing one, and is bound to become more pressing as we increasingly develop technologies that augment our natural abilities.

Since the rise of Homo sapiens, human beings have been the smartest minds around. But very shortly - on a historical scale, that is - we can expect technology to break the upper bound on intelligence that has held for the last few tens of thousands of years.

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

I think that the development of artificial intelligence could lead to the end of the human race.

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.

If I had my druthers, I would be a brain in a jar, with a burlap skirt around the cart I'm on - I don't attend to my physical being much.

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.

We humans are not the end of evolution, so if we can make a machine that's as smart as a person, we can probably also make one that's much smarter. There's no point in making just another person. You want to make one that can do things we can't.

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.

Once we no longer have the intellectual upper hand, then we quite literally, by definition, cannot outwit our successors. So unless we are absolutely sure that the machines we are building right now are not going to eventually become our new robot overlords, prudence is called for.

If the computer-guided robots turn out to be our superiors in every respect, then will they not find that they can run the world better without the need of us at all? Humanity itself will then have become obsolete.

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

It's much more likely that an asteroid will strike the Earth and annihilate life as we know it than AI will turn evil.

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.