Seth Shostak Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

And we should keep our minds open, or at least ajar, to concepts on the fringe of science fiction. Flaky American futurologists aren't always wrong. They remind us that a superintelligent machine is the last instrument that humans may ever design - the machine will itself take over in making further steps.

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

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.

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.

The big question society will have to answer is whether it wants computers thinking like humans.

I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans. And I am rooting for the machines.

Look, when AIs come up, they're not going to be like us. A self-aware, sentient AI is not going to be like a human.

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

'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.

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?

There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition.

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.

By 2020, most home computers will have the computing power of a human brain. That doesn't mean that they are brains, but it means that in terms of raw processing, they can process bits as fast as a brain can. So the question is, how far behind that is the development of a machine that's as smart as we are?

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.

But how does it feel to plug into a system that's say, a million times as smart as a person.

The computer is a moron.