Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine (1965) [pdf]

Post by 27183 » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 7:35 PM UTC

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #15

dwoldrich wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, that didn't happen. The military had stealth aircraft in the 70's. I'll bet they had LLM or better in the 80's and the tech we have now is the consumer-grade version they seeded into industry in the 2020's.

There's 0 chance of that. You can maybe say that for things like material science, nuclear stuff, weird physics, and so on (basically anything relating to making big booms, delivering big booms, or ensuring others can't make big booms). But having LLMs as we understand them now in the 80s would be impossible. They simply didn't have the compute necessary. The entire world combined didn't have it. For reference, a sin…

Post by dwoldrich » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 8:10 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #29

dwoldrich wrote: post #19

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Why are you so certain you know what tech existed in the 80's? NASA used Commodore 64's as part of the constellation of computers needed to launch the space shuttle. That whole program was pretty hokey. That silliness doesn't preclude some radically advanced compute tech from existing elsewhere at the same time. Of course something like that would be ultra secret and you and I wouldn't be told about it. You have to b…

I just try to keep an open mind to these sorts of things. An open mind doesn't mean "a mind full of open circuits." Why are you so certain you know what tech existed in the 80's? Useful LLMs could not have been built without deep-UV semiconductor fabrication at scale, which in turn can't exist without a massive, complex supply chain that envelops the globe like a spiderweb. Such technology could not have been built s…

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 10:20 PM UTC

sethev wrote: post #27

Nevermark wrote: post #7

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>> It is more probable than not that, within the twentieth century, an ultraintelligent machine will be built and that it will be the last invention that man need make, since it will lead to an “intelligence explosion.” > Well, that didn't happen. Predictions are not false because their claims are not in the past yet. That bar would make all predictions wrong. The faster things happen, the higher the speed-of-progres…

I don't think it's a knock on the original prediction to say it didn't turn out to be true. In fact, at the time it probably felt like a pretty conservative prediction. That being said, if you think back to the year 2000, we were pretty far from building such a machine at that time. To me it's an interesting lesson in how hard it is to predict technology advances which still applies to our own predictions of the futu…

Post by bsenftner » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 10:27 PM UTC

27183 wrote: post #42

eszed wrote: post #35

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Yes. Furthermore, when I write precisely - because it's an important subject (read: will cost the company money) where we must be on the same page - people's eyes glaze over, and they ask for a meeting or a phone call instead. So, we do that, and I answer all the questions, and then everyone goes away with a different idea about what we're talking about. The only person who doesn't do that is our controller, who'll t…

> I'm sure it's my fault, somehow - but I'm a damn good writer; I just don't know how to communicate with people who won't put forth the effort to engage with detail. I used to put effort into those people. It was a waste of time. Now I just do everything I can to ignore them, work around them, etc. Knowledge workers who won't engage with the material are just like ditch diggers who won't touch a shovel. They're dead…

Post by Nevermark » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 12:44 AM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #20

Nevermark wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It is more probable than not that, within the twentieth century, an ultraintelligent machine will be built and that it will be the last invention that man need make, since it will lead to an “intelligence explosion.” > Well, that didn't happen. Predictions are not false because their claims are not in the past yet. That bar would make all predictions wrong. The faster things happen, the higher the speed-of-progres…

>>> It is more probable than not that, within the twentieth century, an ultraintelligent machine will be built and that it will be the last invention that man need make, since it will lead to an “intelligence explosion.” >> Well, that didn't happen. > Predictions are not false because their claims are not in the past yet. "Within the twentieth century" places it definitely in the past, and definitely false.