Artificial Intelligence Will Leap Humans by 2020

Artifical intelliegence will surpass human intelligence after 2020, predicts Vernor Vinge, 62, a pioneer in AI, who in a recent interview warned about the risks and opportunities that an electronic super-intelligence would offer to mankind.

Vinge is a retired San Diego State University professor of mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author who is well-known for his 1993 manifesto, "The Coming Technological Singularity, in which he argues that exponential growth in technology means a point will be reached where the consequences are unknown. He is best known for his Hugo Award-winning novels A Fire Upon the Deep, in which he envisions a galaxy that is divided up into 'zones of thought', in which the further one moves from the center of the galaxy, the higher the level of technology one can achieve, and A Deepness in the Sky, a preqel.

Exactly 10 years ago, in May 1997, Deep Blue won the chess tournament against Gary Kasparov. Was that the first glimpse of a new kind of intelligence? Vinge was asked in an interview with Computerworld yesterday.

"I think there was clever programming in Deep Blue," Vinge stated in the Computerworld interview, "but the predictable success came mainly from the ongoing trends in computer hardware improvement. The result was a better-than-human performance in a single, limited problem area. In the future, I think that improvements in both software and hardware will bring success in other intellectual domains."

" It seems plausible that with technology we can, in the fairly near future," Vinge continued, create (or become) creatures who surpass humans in every intellectual and creative dimension. Events beyond such an event -- such a singularity -- are as unimaginable to us as opera is to a flatworm."

Posted by Caset Kazan.

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