# Singularity by 2025 (or 2005, given funding!)

> It's expected in 2035. (Oops, make that 2025.)

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

Chapter: Extropians

Category: timelines & doom

Predicted: 1996

Resolution date: 2001

Status: walked back

Status detail: The prediction was resolved as walked back in 2001

Original source label: Staring into the Singularity, 1996

## Resolution

Disavowal appended to the essay itself: everything about the Powers “almost certainly wrong.” The dates expired on schedule anyway.

## 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.)

Context: The document's opening doubling-cascade ends on a Singularity date revised downward in place in a later edit.

Source: [Staring into the Singularity (1996, mirror)](https://textfiles.meulie.net/russian/cyberlib.narod.ru/lib/critica/sing/singstar.html)

> 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.

Context: His stated target date given funding, followed by the same section's closing estimate of the lower bound.

Source: [Staring into the Singularity (1996, mirror)](https://textfiles.meulie.net/russian/cyberlib.narod.ru/lib/critica/sing/singstar.html)

> 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.

Context: Claim that the 1996 Internet already contained enough compute for a human brain.

Source: [Staring into the Singularity (1996, mirror)](https://textfiles.meulie.net/russian/cyberlib.narod.ru/lib/critica/sing/singstar.html)

## Sources

- [full text (mirror)](https://textfiles.meulie.net/russian/cyberlib.narod.ru/lib/critica/sing/singstar.html)
- [wayback](https://web.archive.org/web/2002/http://sysopmind.com/singularity.html)