From: Billy Brown (bbrown@conemsco.com)
Date: Fri Feb 19 1999 - 07:52:38 MST
Jane Kurtz wrote:
>
> What's an SI?
Short for 'Super Intelligence'. The term springs from some relatively
recent ideas about intelligence enhancement, artificial intelligence,
uploading, and related ideas.
The idea is that at some point in the future there will probably be minds
that exist purely as software running on advanced computer systems. They
might be AIs, or uploaded humans, or even cyborgs or some other type of
hybrid intelligence. What matters for this purpose is that they have
hardware that is vastly more powerful than the human brain.
There are two major opinions about what such an entity would be like. The
'weak SI' school expects that it would be able to think very fast, and do
lots of different things at once, but it would not necessarily be any
smarter than you or me. The 'strong SI' school expects that the extra
processing power would actually make the SI smarter - so at 10^2 times
normal brainpower it is an incredible genius, and at 10^6 times normal it
becomes a godlike intelligence.
A related term is 'Power', or 'Vingean Power' - a strong SI with far more
processing power (and thus intelligence) than our entire species, and
extremely advanced technology to match.
Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@conemsco.com
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