Eventually, if the system’s abilities continue to grow, it attains “strong superintelligence”—a level of intelligence vastly greater than contemporary humanity’s combined intellectual wherewithal. The attainment of strong superintelligence marks the completion of the takeoff, though the system might continue to gain in capacity thereafter. Sometime during the takeoff phase, the system may pass a landmark which we can call “the crossover”, a point beyond which the system’s further improvement is mainly driven by the system’s own actions rather than by work performed upon it by others.1 (The
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