Vernor Vinge Quotes

Here I had tried a straightforward extrapolation of technology, and found myself precipitated over an abyss. It's a problem we face every time we consider the creation of intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity - a place where extrapolation breaks down and new models must be applied - and the world will pass beyond our understanding.

The problem is not simply that the Singularity represents the passing of humankind from center stage, but that it contradicts our most deeply held notions of being.

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.

We will soon create intelligences greater than our own ... When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding.

In fact, there was general agreement that minds can exist on nonbiological substrates and that algorithms are of central importance to the existence of minds.

Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.

Intelligence is the handmaiden of flexibility and change.

How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view?

The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors.

But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.

We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadly light.

But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence.

I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of the humans natural competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology.

I never guessed I could cry so hard my face hurt.

Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace.

Politics is good; when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there's always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is losing irrelevant.

What we have is a data glut.

I say, let's learn more and then speculate.

So much technology, so little talent.

Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work - the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection.

I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.

The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity.

When I began writing science fiction in the middle 60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months.

And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I were regarding these transcendental events from one thousand years remove... instead of twenty.

The voice was gentle, like a scalpel petting the short hairs of your throat.

I am suggesting that we recognize that in network and interface research there is something as profound (and potential wild) as Artificial Intelligence.

IA is something that is proceeding very naturally, in most cases not even recognized by its developers for what it is.

Pham Nuwen plunked himself down, stretching indolently.

Technical people don't make good slaves. Without their wholehearted cooperation, things fall apart.

The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.

We're endangered by our own success.

Effective translation of natural languages comes awfully close to requiring a sentient translator program.

One of his greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.

Once upon a time I was such a good liar; I could talk the fish right into my mouths.

Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and the least expensive manipulation of all.

Politics may come and go, but Greed goes on forever.

It was not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing.

Poor humans; they will all die.""Poor us; we will not.

All evil and good is petty before Nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that cannot be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.

If there be only hours, at least learn what there is time to learn.

We’re long on high principles and short on simple human understanding.

He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.

Sometimes the biggest disasters aren't noticed at all – no one's around to write horror stories.

Note that I am not proposing that AI research be ignored or less funded.

When people speak of creating superhumanly intelligent beings, they are usually imagining an AI project.

Little fish risking everything for a piece of godhood...and not knowing heaven from hell, even when they find it.

How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails.

Peregrine Wickwrackrum was of two minds about evil: when enough rules get broken, sometimes there is good amid the carnage.

Well, what do you know," Pham said. "Butterflies in jackboots.

The illusion of self-awareness. Happy automatons, running on trivial programs. I'll bet you never guess. From the inside, how can you?