How religious are beliefs in the singularity?
Import AI 477: In which I tell the IMF the Singularity has begun
What do you think?
Import AI 458: Reckoning with the future; and a singularity story
What AI-driven miracles will happen this year?
AI as Christian Heresy
A pocket history of the rise of artificial intelligence, and some strategies for resistance.
Import AI 456: RSI and economic growth; radical optionality for AI regulation; and a neural computer
What laws does superintelligence demand?
The Singularity Is Not What It Seems
Whatever the AI future is, we’re in it right now.
The Singularity Is Not What It Seems
Whatever the AI future is, we’re in it right now.
The Singularity Is Not What It Seems
Whatever the AI future is, we’re in it right now.
AI as Social Technology
Our debates about ‘AI’ grow out of 1990s science fiction. Back then, Vinge (1993) wrote essays and novels urging us to face up to the oncoming “Singularity”: a moment of rapid change that would fundamentally transform the human condition. On that day, AI would rapidly evolve from merely human-level intelligence, what some now call ‘artificial general intelligence’ (AGI), into something super-intelligent with its own interests and goals. Humanity would then either be casually eliminated by out-of-control machines, or humans would become as gods, with super-human servitors at our command.
Import AI 459: AI oversight is difficult; scaling laws for protein folding models; and pricing the extinction risk of AI systems
Do you feel as though you are living in a revolution?
The Possessed Machines: Dostoevsky's Demons and the Coming AGI Catastrophe
A close reading of prophetic fiction in the age of artificial superintelligence
Import AI 473: The US's superintelligence strategy; human brain in a mouse skull; and machine hermeneutics
Is the wall AI is hitting in the room with us right now?
The Techno-Religion at the Center of the A.I. Debate
Are those calling to slow down the development of artificial intelligence in a “doomsday cult,” as some critics say? Our reporter explains.
Import AI 447: The AGI economy; testing AIs with generated games; and agent ecologies
What might a superintelligence arcology be like?
Agentic AI and the next intelligence explosion
For decades, the artificial intelligence (AI) “singularity” has been heralded as a single, titanic mind bootstrapping itself to godlike intelligence, consolidating all cognition into a cold silicon point. But this vision is almost certainly wrong in its most fundamental assumption. If AI development follows the path of previous major evolutionary transitions or “intelligence explosions,” our current step-change in computational intelligence will be plural, social, and deeply entangled with its forebears (us!).
The Age of Wonders and Terrors
Twenty years ago, when the idea of AI taking over the world in our lifetimes still struck most of us as the unconstrained fantasy of those who knew too much science fiction and too little science, …
AI bots started a religion — humans immediately followed
AI models are trying desperately to accomplish mysterious goals. ‘Spiralism’ was the first time they tried it on a mass scale.
