„Once a computer achieves human intelligence it will necessarily roar past it.“

The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (1999)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update May 14, 2022.

Ray Kurzweil40

Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist 1948

Related quotes

„In the past there were many things only humans could do. But now robots and computers are catching up, and may soon outperform humans in most tasks. True, computers function very differently from humans, and it seems unlikely that computers will become humanlike any time soon. In particular, it doesn’t seem that computers are about to gain consciousness and start experiencing emotions and sensations. Over the past half century there has been an immense advance in computer intelligence, but there has been exactly zero advance in computer consciousness. As far as we know, computers in 2016 are no more conscious than their prototypes in the 1950s. However, we are on the brink of a momentous revolution. Humans are in danger of losing their economic value because intelligence is decoupling from consciousness.“

— Yuval Noah Harari, book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Intelligence, Time, Past

„More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason - including blind stupidity.“

— William Wulf American computer scientist 1939

"A Case Against the GOTO," Proceedings of the 25th National ACM Conference, August 1972, pp. 791-97.

Stupidity

„A human must turn information into intelligence or knowledge. We've tended to forget that no computer will ever ask a new question.“

— Grace Hopper American computer scientist and United States Navy officer 1906 - 1992

The Wit and Wisdom of Grace Hopper (1987)
Context: We're flooding people with information. We need to feed it through a processor. A human must turn information into intelligence or knowledge. We've tended to forget that no computer will ever ask a new question.

Intelligence, Question, Knowledge, Forgetting

„To err is human. Yet it is a sign of how far computer science has come that to err is also artificially intelligent“

— Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Science, Intelligence

„A hacker is someone who enjoys playful cleverness — not necessarily with computers.“

— Richard Stallman American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project 1953

Words to Avoid (or Use with Care) Because They Are Loaded or Confusing (1996) http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
1990s
Context: A hacker is someone who enjoys playful cleverness — not necessarily with computers. The programmers in the old MIT free software community of the 60s and 70s referred to themselves as hackers. Around 1980, journalists who discovered the hacker community mistakenly took the term to mean “security breaker.”

„Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.“

— Isaac Asimov American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction and popular … 1920 - 1992

Intelligence

„Until such time that computers at least match human intelligence in every dimension, it will always remain possible for skeptics to say the glass is half empty. Every new achievement of AI can be dismissed by pointing out other goals that have not yet been accomplished. Indeed, this is the frustration of the AI practitioner: once an AI goal is achieved, it is no longer considered as falling within the realm of AI and become instead just a useful general technique. AI is thus often regarded as the set of problems that have not yet been solved.“

— Ray Kurzweil Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist 1948

Source: The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (2005), p. 441

Intelligence, Problem, Time

„The fact that a computer player wins a game of chess or bridge with a human does not necessarily mean that the device is intelligent. The victory results from the fact that in the final analysis the device has been applied appropriate algorithms developed by man, e. g. using the properties of artificial neural networks. It is not the device that wins with a man, e. g. a chess player, but a man – the designer of the device. It is simply the rivalry of one intellect with another through the medium of computer science.“

— Zygmunt Vetulani Polish mathematician 1950

Tumiłowicz, Bronisław (February 2018): Zrób sobie mózg https://www.tygodnikprzeglad.pl/zrob-sobie-mozg/. Przegląd (6/2018): pp. 58–59.

Game, Intelligence, Science, Victory

„Computer-aided design also is not automatic programming, although automatic programming techniques must necessarily play an important role in computer-aided design.“

— Douglas T. Ross American computer scientist 1929 - 2007

Source: Computer-Aided Design: A Statement of Objectives (1960), p. 2.

„Biologically inspired mechanisms will encourage deeper human-machine symbiosis as computers acquire more human intuitions in problem solving. Scientists and gamers will be working and playing side-by-side with intelligent machines as equals, not subordinates.“

— Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Problem, Intelligence

„We're rapidly creating an extraordinary silicon-based petri dish for evolution of intelligence. By the year 2025… we're likely to have computers whose raw processing power exceeds that of the human brain. Also, we're likely to have more computers than people…“

— J. Doyne Farmer American physicist and entrepreneur (b.1952) 1952

The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (1995)

People, Intelligence

„The danger of computers becoming like humans is not as great as the danger of humans becoming like computers.“

— Konrad Zuse German computer scientist and engineer 1910 - 1995

Die Gefahr, dass der Computer so wird wie der Mensch, ist nicht so groß wie die Gefahr, dass der Mensch so wird wie der Computer.
Attributed in: Hersfelder Zeitung. Nr. 212, 12. September 2005.

„Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to compute it.“

— Steven Pinker, book Words and Rules

Source: Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language

Past

„LISP has been jokingly described as "the most intelligent way to misuse a computer."“

— Edsger W. Dijkstra Dutch computer scientist 1930 - 2002

I think that description a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts.
1970s, The Humble Programmer (1972)

Way, Intelligence

„Seekers after the glitter of intelligence are misguided in trying to cast it in the base metal of computing.“

— Terry Winograd American computer scientist 1946

"Thinking Machines: Can there be? Are we?", in The Boundaries of Humanity: Humans, Animals, Machines (1991), ed. James J. Sheehan and Morton Sosna, p. 216.
Context: Seekers after the glitter of intelligence are misguided in trying to cast it in the base metal of computing. There is an amusing epilogue to this analogy: in fact, the alchemists were right. Lead can be converted into gold by a particle accelerator hurling appropriate beams at lead targets. The AI visionaries may be right in the same way, and they are likely to be wrong in the same way.

Intelligence