[extropy-chat] Futures Past--time-line

[Daniel Assange]

Shouldn't we also be considering quantum computing? A quantum computer
isn't just a suped-up standard one; the computational process is
fundamentally different. One would expect an AI written to utilise
this fundamental difference to be significantly more powerful, and
hence perhaps the software writers may be able to take more liberties
with software efficency.

-- Daniel Assange <d.assange at ugrad.unimelb.edu.au>
   "The way to enlightenment is not to admit that
    you know nothing, but to admit that you
    can never know enough."

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005, Damien Broderick wrote:

>                      Birge  Brenner  Drexler  Hall   Smalley
> 
> Molecular Assembler: 2005    2025     2015    2010    2000
> Nanocomputer:        2040    2040     2017    2010    2100
> Cell Repair:         2030    2035     2018    2050    2010
> Commercial product:  2002    2000     2015    2005    2000
> 
> #          Moravec: multipurpose `universal' robots by 2010, with 
> `humanlike competence' in cheap computers by around 2039--a more 
> conservative estimate than Ray Kurzweil's, but astonishing none the less. 
> Even so, he considers a Vingean singularity as likely within 50 years.
> 
> #          Kaku: no computer expert, superstring physicist Michio Kaku 
> surveyed some 150 scientists in devised a profile of the next century and 
> farther. He concludes broadly that from `2020 to 2050, the world of 
> computers may well be dominated by invisible, networked computers which 
> have the power of artificial intelligence: reason, speech recognition, even 
> common sense'.172 In the next century or two, he expects humanity to 
> achieve a Type I Kardeshev civilization, with planetary governance and 
> technology able to control weather but essentially restricted to Earth. 
> Only later, between 800 and 2500 years farther on, will humanity pass to 
> Type II, with command of the entire solar system. Once the consensus dream 
> of science fiction, this must now be seen as excessively conservative.
> 
> #          Vinge: as we noted at the outset, Vernor Vinge's part-playful, 
> part-serious proposal that a singularity was imminent puts the date at 
> around 2020, marking the end of the human era. Maybe as soon as 2014.
> 
> 
> 2.72.  Michio Kaku, Visions (1998), p. 28.