Quotes About Innovation

Our human intelligence is based on computational processes that we are learning to understand. We will ultimately multiply our intellectual powers by applying and extending the methods of human intelligence using the vastly greater capacity of nonbiological computation. So to consider the ultimate limits of computation is really to ask: what is the destiny of our civilization?

Ultimately, we will be able to port our mental processes to a more suitable computational substrate. Then our minds won't have to stay so small.

It needs only to be good enough, which in the case of our species meant a level of intelligence sufficient to enable us to outwit the competitors in our ecological niche

do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success. —NIKOLA TESLA, 1896, INVENTOR OF ALTERNATING CURRENT

The need to congregate workers in offices will gradually diminish.

Given that self-improving strong AI cannot be recalled, Yudkowsky points out that we need to "get it right the first time," and that its initial design must have "zero nonrecoverable errors."45

Ever since we picked up a stick to reach a higher branch, we have used our tools to extend our reach, both physically and mentally.

T]here are no hard problems, only problems that are hard to a certain level of intelligence.

To express this another way, we won't experience one hundred years of technological advance in the twenty-first century; we will witness on the order of twenty thousand years of progress (again, when measured by today's rate of progress), or about one thousand times greater than what was achieved in the twentieth century.4

Singularity? It's a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed.

capacity, and bandwidth) of information technologies

To appreciate its apparent complication, it is useful to zoom in on its image (which you can access via the links in this endnote).

The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out.

GEORGE 2048: We like to think of it as one civilization.

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success. —NIKOLA TESLA, 1896, INVENTOR OF ALTERNATING CURRENT

No communication technology has ever disappeared, but instead becomes increasingly less important as the technological horizon widens.

This, then, was the religion that I was raised with: veneration for human creativity and the power of ideas.

the R&D department can't get them to work but because the timing is wrong. Inventing is a lot like surfing: you have to anticipate and catch the wave at just the right moment.

I realized that most inventions fail not because the R&D department can't get them to work but because the timing is wrong. Inventing is a lot like surfing: you have to anticipate and catch the wave at just the right moment.

electron-beam lithography

perform the equivalent of all human thought over the last ten thousand years (assumed at ten billion human brains for ten thousand years) in ten microseconds.64 If we examine the "Exponential Growth of Computing" chart (p. 70), we see that this amount of computing is estimated to be available for one thousand dollars by 2080.

A machine is as distinctively and brilliantly and expressively human as a violin sonata or a theorem in Euclid. —GREGORY VLASTOS

Once you're on the road to slowing down aging and dramatically reducing your risk of disease, you'll find that you will discover new ideas on a regular basis as our knowledge of how biology works continues to grow exponentially.

Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons. —POPULAR MECHANICS