Re: The next 100 months

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Mon, 18 Oct 1999 21:03:27 -0500

Bryan Moss wrote:
>
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>
> > *My* hoped-for timeline:
> >
> > 1999-2007: Nothing much happens.
>
> How about, Eliezer [does all the work]

By "nothing much happens", I don't mean that we're sitting around twiddling our fingers. I mean that no technological developments of sufficient magnitude to disturb the world order occur.

> > July 6th, 2007: The Singularity Institute announces that
> > they're testing an AI. The press release uses the words
> > "self-understanding" and a lot of technobabble.
> > Absolutely nobody uses the words "Singularity" or
> > "transcend".
>
> Well, the press release will almost certainly say
> 'Singularity' in it somewhere, since it's from the
> Singularity Institute an' all.

Hm. That's actually a darned good point. I'll have to think about that one.

There really is a problem implicit in trying to do things neatly and quietly; if you're too quiet, you don't get the resources. Something of a tradeoff between assembling the technophiles and panicking the technophobes... I think I tend to lean towards assembling the technophiles, since the technophobes can always panic anyway. (It doesn't matter whether or not you admit to trying to bring about the end of life as we know it, since you'll still be accused of it.)

When in doubt... I think I still believe human interactions in twentieth-century liberal democracies are sufficiently fair that honesty remains the best policy.

-- 
           sentience@pobox.com          Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
        http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS           Typing in Dvorak          Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians   Heading for Singularity   There Is A Better Way