# Hard takeoff in a basement within ten years

> …a hard takeoff occurs in SIAI's or Webmind's basement sometime in the next ten years or so.

Canonical URL: https://foom.hyperplex.org/p/basement

Chapter: Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence

Category: timelines & doom

Predicted: 2001

Resolution date: 2011

Status: falsified by events

Status detail: The prediction was resolved as falsified by events in 2011

Original source label: SL4, Jan 2001

## Resolution

Webmind went bankrupt within months. The decade closed with no takeoff from anyone's basement.

## Context and outcome

Yudkowsky claimed that genetic engineering and brain-computer interfaces wouldn't matter because they'd arrive around 2020, and a basement hard takeoff would beat them by a decade.

Webmind Inc. collapsed in 2001, SIAI never built its seed AI, and nothing resembling a takeoff occurred by 2011 or 2020.

## Supporting receipts

> What actually happens is that genetic engineering and neurohacking … don't show up, because they'd show up in 2020, and a hard takeoff occurs in SIAI's or Webmind's basement sometime in the next ten years or so.

Context: Arguing human-enhancement tech never arrives because a basement hard takeoff beats it by a decade.

Source: [SL4, 24 Jan 2001](http://sl4.org/archive/0101/0452.html)

> There still comes a point when the SI says that the Introdus wavefront is on the way, and you sit there waiting for the totally unknowable future to hit you in the next five seconds.

Context: Same message, describing the final moments after the basement takeoff.

Source: [SL4, 24 Jan 2001](http://sl4.org/archive/0101/0452.html)

## Sources

- [SL4: Event horizon (2001)](http://sl4.org/archive/0101/0452.html)