Eliezer Yudkowsky
Independent researcher, later co-founder of MIRI
Why they matterCo-founder of MIRI; among the most influential early writers on AI existential risk
- Status
- Closed
- Prediction made
- 1996
- Predicted arrival
- 2021
- Interval
- 25 yrs
“Computing speed doubles every two subjective years of work. Two years after Artificial Intelligences reach human equivalence, their speed doubles. One year later, their speed doubles again. Six months — three months — 1.5 months … Singularity.”
Context
David Chalmers' survey of Singularity forecasts records Yudkowsky's 1996 essay as predicting a Singularity by 2021 via a hardware-driven speed explosion. Yudkowsky later marked the essay 'obsolete' and disavowed the hardware-extrapolation argument.
Why it is considered incorrect
2021 arrived with no Singularity, no human-equivalent AI capable of recursive self-improvement, and no runaway speed explosion.