.” He believed that technological progress could eventually spawn an entity with capabilities surpassing the human brain. Its introduction to society would warp the world beyond recognition—a “change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth,” in Vinge’s own words., but Vinge envisioned it in other ways.
If we develop AGI, it might open the door to a future of creating a superhuman intelligence. When applied to research, that intelligence could then produce its own new discoveries and new technologies at a breakneck pace. For instance, imagine a hypothetical AI system better than any real-world computer scientist. Now, imagine that system in turn tasked with designing better AI systems. The result, some researchers believe, could be an exponential acceleration of AI’s capabilities.