Some authors, notably Ray Kurzweil, have made very precise predictions about when machine superintelligence will arise. Writing in 2005, Kurzweil claimed that by the year 2045 the quantity of nonbiological intelligence on the planet will substantially exceed that of the entire human population.2 He based his projections on exponential technological trends, extrapolating them into the future. The best known of these exponential trends is Moore’s law, which we have already encountered several times. This states that the number of transistors that can be fabricated on a given area of silicon
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