Sat, 10 May 2003
On ultraintelligent machines
Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that
can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man
however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these
intellectual activities, an ultra-intelligent machine could
design even better machines; there would then unquestionably
be an "intelligence explosion," and the intelligence of man
would be left far behind (see for example refs. [22], [34],
[44]). Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last
invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine
is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control. It
is curious that this point is made so seldom outside of
science fiction.
From Speculations
Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine, a paper by
Irving John Good, then at Trinity College, Oxford. England and
Atlas Computer Laboratory, Chilton, Berkshire, England. This
paper was
based on talks given in a Conference on the Conceptual Aspects
of Biocommunications, Neuropsychiatric Institute, University
of California, Los Angeles, October 1962; and in the
Artificial Intelligence Sessions of the Winter General
Meetings of the IEEE, January 1963
(This may be the first paper to actually note the
singular consequences of developing ultraintelligent machines,
and some of its conclusions don't look that far out even
today, forty years later: "The first ultraintelligent machine
will need to be ultraparallel, and is likely to be achieved
with the help of a very large artificial neural net. The
required high degree of connectivity might be attained with
the help of microminiature radio transmitters and receivers.
The machine will have a multimillion dollar computer and
information-retrieval system under its direct control. The
design of the machine will be partly suggested by analogy with
several aspects of the human brain and intellect. In
particular, the machine will have high linguistic ability
...")
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