Vernor Vinge

I am suggesting that we recognize that in network and interface research there is something as profound (and potential wild) as Artificial Intelligence.

But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence.

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

Note that I am not proposing that AI research be ignored or less funded.

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

We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadly light.

I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.

The problem is not simply that the Singularity represents the passing of humankind from center stage, but that it contradicts our most deeply held notions of being.

In fact, there was general agreement that minds can exist on nonbiological substrates and that algorithms are of central importance to the existence of minds.

Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work - the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection.

The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.

How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view?