The late 90s may have felt like peak clarity to people like Stross because the internet made it viscerally obvious to a wider audience — but the intellectual clarity was well established decades earlier.
• 1970s–80s — Vernor Vinge was writing and lecturing about the Singularity, culminating in his famous 1993 essay — which itself predates Stross’s “late 90s” clarity
• 1950 — Turing’s “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” paper essentially asked “can machines think?” and laid out the trajectory
• 1956 — The Dartmouth Conference literally coined “Artificial Intelligence” and its pioneers confidently predicted human-level AI within a generation
• 1965 — I.J. Good described the “intelligence explosion” concept almost exactly as we discuss it today — a machine that improves itself recursively surpassing human intelligence
• 1958 — John von Neumann was already talking about a technological “singularity” to Stanislaw Ulam
Late 90s peak clarity !! - the simple “facts” are so often the best reminders - and it’s so true but hard to wrap your head around - Peter’s book made me compare iPhone 1 vs now - the stats are mind blowing … you think of that in a robot and with development speed being faster now … singularity is the best answer
Outstanding information. Thanks.
You're welcome!
Some fun facts
The late 90s may have felt like peak clarity to people like Stross because the internet made it viscerally obvious to a wider audience — but the intellectual clarity was well established decades earlier.
• 1970s–80s — Vernor Vinge was writing and lecturing about the Singularity, culminating in his famous 1993 essay — which itself predates Stross’s “late 90s” clarity
• 1950 — Turing’s “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” paper essentially asked “can machines think?” and laid out the trajectory
• 1956 — The Dartmouth Conference literally coined “Artificial Intelligence” and its pioneers confidently predicted human-level AI within a generation
• 1965 — I.J. Good described the “intelligence explosion” concept almost exactly as we discuss it today — a machine that improves itself recursively surpassing human intelligence
• 1958 — John von Neumann was already talking about a technological “singularity” to Stanislaw Ulam
Late 90s peak clarity !! - the simple “facts” are so often the best reminders - and it’s so true but hard to wrap your head around - Peter’s book made me compare iPhone 1 vs now - the stats are mind blowing … you think of that in a robot and with development speed being faster now … singularity is the best answer
Lots of sun and wind here in Texas, let's hope ERCOT can get it togeather. The last ice storm here a few years ago took out the gird..
Thank you for this. It is invaluable.
Hello Dr Alex Wissner-Gross,
We're new here and turning our published Novels that's deposited into the Library Archives of Canada into Substack articles.
Thus is one of them:
https://substack.com/@urmpress/note/c-259875440?r=7uiz37