Re: The next 100 months

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Oct 18 1999 - 20:03:27 MDT


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


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