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Were nuclear weapons cost-effective explosives?

By Katja Grace, 11 January 2015 Nuclear weapons were radically more powerful per pound than any previous bomb. Their appearance was a massive discontinuity in the long-run path of explosive progress, that we have lately discussed.

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A summary of AI surveys

By Katja Grace, 10 January 2015 If you want to know when human-level AI will be developed, a natural approach is to ask someone who works on developing AI. You might however be put off by such predictions being regularly criticized

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AI Timeline Surveys

AI Timeline Surveys

This page is out-of-date. Visit the updated version of this page on our wiki. Published 10 January 2015 We know of twelve surveys on the predicted timing of human-level AI. If we collapse a few slightly different meanings of

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AI Timeline Surveys

Michie Survey

In a 1972 poll of sixty-seven AI and computer science experts, respondents were roughly divided between expecting human-level intelligence in 20 years, in 50 years and in more than 50 years. They were also roughly divided between considering a ‘takeover’

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AI and the Big Nuclear Discontinuity

By Katja Grace, 9 January 2015 As we’ve discussed before, the advent of nuclear weapons was a striking technological discontinuity in the effectiveness of explosives. In 1940, no one had ever made an explosive twice as

First nuclear reaction
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The Biggest Technological Leaps

By Katja Grace, 9 January 2015 Over thousands of years, humans became better at producing explosions. A weight of explosive that would have blown up a tree stump in the year 800 could have blown

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The AI Impacts Blog

By Katja Grace, 9 January 2015 Welcome to the AI Impacts blog.  AI Impacts is premised on two ideas (at least!): The details of the arrival of human-level artificial intelligence matterSeven years to prepare is very different from

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Cases of Discontinuous Technological Progress

We know of ten events which produced a robust discontinuity in progress equivalent to more than one hundred years at previous rates in some interesting metric. We know of 53 other events which produced smaller

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Continuity of progress

Effect of nuclear weapons on historic trends in explosives

Nuclear weapons constituted a ~7 thousand year discontinuity in relative effectiveness factor (TNT equivalent per kg of explosive). Nuclear weapons do not appear to have clearly represented progress in the cost-effectiveness of explosives, though the

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AI Timeline Surveys

AGI-09 Survey

Baum et al. surveyed 21 attendees of the AGI-09 conference, on AGI timelines with and without extra funding. They also asked about other details of AGI development such as social impacts, and promising approaches. Their findings include the following: