AI Impacts

Multipolar research questions

By Katja Grace, 11 February 2015 The Multipolar AI workshop we ran a fortnight ago went well, and we just put up a list of research projects from it. I hope this is helpful inspiration to those of you thinking about applying

List of multipolar research projects

This list currently consists of research projects suggested at the Multipolar AI workshop we held on January 26 2015. Relatively concrete projects are marked [concrete]. These are more likely to already include specific questions to answer and feasible methods to answer them

How AI timelines are estimated

By Katja Grace, 9 February 2015 A natural approach to informing oneself about when human-level AI will arrive is to check what experts who have already investigated the question say about it. So we made this list of analyses that we could find. It’s

At-least-human-level-at-human-cost AI

By Katja Grace, 7 February 2015 Often, when people are asked ‘when will human-level AI arrive?’ they suggest that it is a meaningless or misleading term. I think they have a point. Or several, though probably

Penicillin and syphilis

By Katja Grace, 2 February 2015 Penicillin was a hugely important discovery. But was it a discontinuity in the normal progression of research, or just an excellent discovery which followed a slightly less excellent discovery,

Discontinuous progress investigation

Published Feb 2, 2015; last substantially updated April 12 2020 We have collected cases of discontinuous technological progress to inform our understanding of whether artificial intelligence performance is likely to undergo such a discontinuity. This page

List of Analyses of Time to Human-Level AI

This is a list of most of the substantial analyses of AI timelines that we know of. It also covers most of the arguments and opinions of which we are aware. Details The list below contains substantial

The slow traversal of ‘human-level’

By Katja Grace, 21 January 2015 Once you have normal-human-level AI, how long does it take to get Einstein-level AI? We have seen that a common argument for ‘not long at all’ based on brain size does not

Making or breaking a thinking machine

By Katja Grace, 18 January 2015 Here is a superficially plausible argument: the brains of the slowest humans are almost identical to those of the smartest humans. And thus—in the great space of possible intelligence—the ‘human-level’ band must be very narrow. Since

The range of human intelligence

This page may be out-of-date. Visit the updated version of this page on our wiki. The range of human intelligence seems large relative to the space below it, as measured by performance on tasks we