Editing Technological singularity (section)

== Intelligence explosion ==
{{Further|Recursive self-improvement}}

Although technological progress has been accelerating in most areas, it has been limited by the basic intelligence of the human brain, which has not, according to [[Paul R. Ehrlich]], changed significantly for millennia.<ref name="Paul Ehrlich June 2008">{{Cite web |last=Ehrlich |first=Paul |title=Paul Ehrlich: The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment – The Long Now |url=https://longnow.org/seminars/02008/jun/27/dominant-animal-human-evolution-and-environment/ |access-date=2023-06-14 |website=longnow.org}}</ref> However, with the increasing power of computers and other technologies, it might eventually be possible to build a machine that is significantly more intelligent than humans.<ref name="businessweek">{{Cite web |date=2023-04-20 |title=Businessweek – Bloomberg |url=https://bloomberg.com/businessweek |access-date=2023-06-14 |website=Bloomberg.com |language=en}}</ref>

If a superhuman intelligence were to be invented—either through the [[Intelligence amplification|amplification of human intelligence]] or through artificial intelligence—it would, in theory, vastly improve over human problem-solving and inventive skills. Such an AI is referred to as '''Seed AI'''<ref name="Yampolskiy, Roman V 2015">Yampolskiy, Roman V. "Analysis of types of self-improving software." Artificial General Intelligence. Springer International Publishing, 2015. pp. 384–393.</ref><ref name="ReferenceA">[[Eliezer Yudkowsky]]. ''General Intelligence and Seed AI-Creating Complete Minds Capable of Open-Ended Self-Improvement'', 2001.</ref> because if an AI were created with engineering capabilities that matched or surpassed those of its human creators, it would have the potential to autonomously improve its own software and hardware to design an even more capable machine, which could repeat the process in turn. This recursive self-improvement could accelerate, potentially allowing enormous qualitative change before any upper limits imposed by the laws of physics or theoretical computation set in. It is speculated that over many iterations, such an AI [[Superintelligence|would far surpass human cognitive abilities]].

[[I. J. Good]] speculated that superhuman intelligence might bring about an intelligence explosion:<ref name="good1965"/><ref name="good1965-stat"/>
{{blockquote|Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion', and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.|source=Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine (1965)}}

One version of intelligence explosion is where computing power approaches infinity in a finite amount of time. In this version, once AIs are performing the research to improve themselves, speed doubles e.g. after 2 years, then 1 year, then 6 months, then 3 months, then 1.5 months, etc., where the infinite sum of the doubling periods is 4 years. Unless prevented by physical limits of computation and time quantization, this process would achieve infinite computing power in 4 years, properly earning the name "singularity" for the final state. This form of intelligence explosion is described in Yudkowsky (1996).<ref name="yudkowsky1996"/>