Intelligence explosion

https://arbital.com/p/intelligence_explosion

by Eliezer Yudkowsky Jun 7 2016

What happens if a self-improving AI gets to the point where each amount x of self-improvement triggers >x further self-improvement, and it stays that way for a while.


An "intelligence explosion" is what happens if a machine intelligence has fast, consistent returns on investing work into improving its own cognitive powers, over an extended period. This would most stereotypically happen because it became able to optimize its own cognitive software, but could also apply in the case of "invested cognitive power in seizing all the computing power on the Internet" or "invested cognitive power in cracking the protein folding problem and then built nanocomputers".