II. From AGI to Superintelligence: the Intelligence Explosion
AI progress won’t stop at human-level. Hundreds of millions of AGIs could automate AI research, compressing a decade of algorithmic progress (5+ OOMs) into ≤1 year. We would rapidly go from human-level to vastly superhuman AI systems. The power—and the peril—of superintelligence would be dramatic.
Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.
In the common imagination, the Cold War’s terrors principally trace back to Los Alamos, with the invention of the atomic bomb. But The Bomb, alone, is perhaps overrated. Going from The Bomb to The Super—hydrogen bombs—was arguably just as important.
