Blog

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

Blog

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,

AI Timelines

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

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AI Timelines

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

Blog

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

Blog

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

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Range of Human Performance

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This page may be out-of-date.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

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Blog

Are AI surveys seeing the inside view?

By Katja Grace, 15 January 2015 An interesting thing about the survey data on timelines to human-level AI is the apparent incongruity between answers to ‘when will human-level AI arrive?’ and answers to ‘how much of the way to human-level AI have

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Blog

Event: Multipolar AI workshop with Robin Hanson

By Katja Grace, 14 January 2015 On Monday 26 January we will be holding a discussion on promising research projects relating to ‘multipolar‘ AI scenarios. That is, future scenarios where society persists in containing a large number of similarly

Blog

Michie and overoptimism

By Katja Grace, 12 January 2015 We recently wrote about Donald Michie’s survey on timelines to human-level AI. Michie’s survey is especially interesting because it was taken in 1972, which is three decades earlier than any other surveys we