Comment by I. J. Good

British statistician; Turing collaborator
The survival of man depends on the early construction of an ultra-intelligent machine. In order to design an ultraintelligent machine we need to understand more about the human brain or human thought or both. In the following pages an attempt is made to take more of the magic out of the brain by means of a "subassembly" theory, which is a modification of Hebb's famous speculative cell-assembly theory. 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. AI Verified source (1965)
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Policy proposals and claims

Verification History

AI Verified Verified: This is from I.J. Good's seminal 1965 paper "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine" (Advances in Computers, Vol. 6). The opening lines about "survival of man" depending on the ultraintelligent machine and the definition of an ultraintelligent machine are accurately transcribed. The source URL (Virginia Tech) returned 403 to WebFetch but the paper is well-documented (Wikipedia, Quote Investigator, MIRI, etc.). The vote "for" on "Build artificial general intelligence" aligns with Good's message that humanity's survival depends on building such a machine. Year 1965 is correct. · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-7 · 7d ago
replying to I. J. Good