Vernor Vinge Quotes

• He claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind – but most everybody else agreed it made you daft.

  Vernor Vinge

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  Tags in War

• 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.

  Vernor Vinge

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  Tags in Adapt, Inventions

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

  Vernor Vinge

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  Tags in Imagining, Intelligent

• The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.

  Vernor Vinge

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  Tags in Extinction, Possibility

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

  Vernor Vinge

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Edge, Rise

• 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.

  Vernor Vinge

  Topics in Intelligence

  Tags in Communicate

• 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.

  Vernor Vinge

  Tags in Agreement, In Fact

• It is a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules.

  Vernor Vinge

  Tags in Models, Discarded

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

  Vernor Vinge

  Tags in Proposing, Funded

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

  Vernor Vinge

  Tags in Endeavors, Dilemma

• 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.

  Vernor Vinge

  Tags in Singularity, Notions

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

  Vernor Vinge

  Tags in Elite, Domain

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

  Vernor Vinge

  Tags in Humans, Regard

• 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.

  Vernor Vinge

  Tags in Consciousness, Months, Eighteen

• Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence.

  Vernor Vinge

  Tags in Technological, Superhuman

• 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.

  Vernor Vinge

  Tags in Twenty, Remove

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

  Vernor Vinge

  Tags in Spread, Commonplace

• But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.

  Vernor Vinge

  Tags in Technological, Singularity

• Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.

  Vernor Vinge

  Tags in Small Things, Avalanche

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

  Vernor Vinge

  Tags in Suggesting, Interface

Vernor Vinge (22)

Birth:	2nd October, 1944
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Computer Scientist

About

Vernor Steffen Vinge is a retired San Diego State University (SDSU) Professor of Mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author.

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Births

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Deaths

• 1960 - Alfred L. Kroeber
• 2003 - Wally George
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• 2001 - Mike Mansfield
• 2003 - Neil Postman