ABSTRACT
Turing’s approach to creation of artificial (super)intelligence was echoed by I. J. Good, Marvin Minsky, and John von Neumann, all three of whom published on it (interestingly in the same year, 1966): According to Good (1966, 33), “Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion.’” Minsky (1966, 257) said: “Once we
have devised programs with a genuine capacity for self-improvement a rapid evolutionary process will begin. As the machine improves both itself and its model of itself, we shall begin to see all the phenomena associated with the terms ‘consciousness,’ ‘intuition’ and ‘intelligence’ itself.” Von Neumann stated that “there exists a critical size … above which the phenomenon of synthesis, if properly arranged, can become explosive, in other words, where syntheses of automata can proceed in such a manner that each automaton will produce other automata which are more complex and of higher potentialities than itself” (Burks and Von Neumann 1966, 80). Similar types of arguments are still being made by modern researchers, and the area of recursive self-improvement (RSI) research continues to grow in popularity (Pearce 2012; Omohundro 2007; Waser 2014), although some (Hall 2008a) have argued that the RSI process requires hyperhuman capability to “get the ball rolling,” a kind of “Catch 22.”
