Prediction · timelines & doom
Singularity by 2025 (or 2005, given funding!)
Predicted in 1996 from Staring into the Singularity, 1996
“It's expected in 2035. (Oops, make that 2025.)”
Resolution
walked back. The prediction was resolved as walked back in 2001.
Disavowal appended to the essay itself: everything about the Powers
“almost certainly wrong.” The dates expired on schedule anyway.
Timeline
- Prediction made
- 1996
- Resolution date
- 2001
- Chapter
- Chapter 01: Extropians
- Verdict
- walked back
Context and outcome
The essay applied Moore’s law to subjective time, producing the date 2035, then 2025, then 2015; with 2005 as a target if the project received roughly $100 million a year, with thirty seconds given as a lower bound. The 2000 revision claimed that the Internet already contained enough computing power, “if properly reprogrammed,” to run a human brain, and that “perhaps a smaller computer” could support a seed AI.
Yudkowsky gradually backed away from these claims. Around 2001, he added a disavowal to the essay. He then later disavowed everything he had written before 2003. Every named date has since passed.
Supporting receipts
“It's expected in 2035. (Oops, make that 2025.)”
The document's opening doubling-cascade ends on a Singularity date revised downward in place in a later edit.
“I would like the Singularity to occur in 2005, which I think I would have a reasonable chance of doing via AI if someone handed me a billion dollars a year. … The lower bound? Thirty seconds.”
His stated target date given funding, followed by the same section's closing estimate of the lower bound.
“We don't lack the technology; the Singularity could happen tomorrow. The Internet has enough power, if properly reprogrammed, to run a human brain, and perhaps a smaller computer has enough power to run a seed AI.”
Claim that the 1996 Internet already contained enough compute for a human brain.