Vernor Vinge Quotations

Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.

And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I were regarding these transcendental events from one thousand years remove... instead of twenty.

In fact, there was general agreement that minds can exist on nonbiological substrates and that algorithms are of central importance to the existence of minds.

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.

When people speak of creating superhumanly intelligent beings, they are usually imagining an AI project.

The problem is not simply that the Singularity represents the passing of humankind from center stage, but that it contradicts our most deeply held notions of being.

I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.

When I began writing science fiction in the middle '60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months.

How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view?

Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace.

But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.

I am suggesting that we recognize that in network and interface research there is something as profound (and potential wild) as Artificial Intelligence.

It is a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules.

The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors.

The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.

We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadly light.

I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of the humans natural competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology.

The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity.

But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence.

Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work - the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection.

IA is something that is proceeding very naturally, in most cases not even recognized by its developers for what it is.

Note that I am not proposing that AI research be ignored or less funded.

Well, maybe it won't happen at all: Sometimes I try to imagine the symptoms that we should expect to see if the Singularity is not to develop.

Based largely on this trend, I believe that the creation of greater than human intelligence will occur during the next thirty years.

Well, what do you know," Pham said. "Butterflies in jackboots.

How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails.

Life is a green madness just now, trying to squeeze the last bit of warmth from the season.

I say, let's learn more and then speculate.

Hexapodia as the key insight...I haven't had a chance to see the famous video from Straumli Realm, except as an evocation. (My only gateway onto the Net is very expensive.) Is it true that humans have six legs?

It was not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing.

Peregrine Wickwrackscar was flying. A pilgrim with legends that went back almost a thousand years-and not one of them could come near to this!

If there be only hours, at least learn what there is time to learn.

I have come to kill you."The death's heads shrugged. "You have come to try.

All his life he had lived by the law. Often his job had been to stop acts of revenge....And now revenge was all that life had left for him.

Effective translation of natural languages comes awfully close to requiring a sentient translator program.

The illusion of self-awareness. Happy automatons, running on trivial programs. I'll bet you never guess. From the inside, how can you?

Technical people don't make good slaves. Without their wholehearted cooperation, things fall apart.

Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and the least expensive manipulation of all.

Little fish risking everything for a piece of godhood...and not knowing heaven from hell, even when they find it.

We’re long on high principles and short on simple human understanding.

All evil and good is petty before Nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that cannot be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.

Once upon a time I was such a good liar; I could talk the fish right into my mouths.

Politics is good; when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there's always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is losing irrelevant.

Sometimes the biggest disasters aren't noticed at all - no one's around to write horror stories.

What we have is a data glut.

One of his greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.

I never guessed I could cry so hard my face hurt.

He claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind - but most everybody else agreed it made you daft.

The heart of manipulation is to empathize without being touched.

The voice was gentle, like a scalpel petting the short hairs of your throat.

He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.

Politics may come and go, but Greed goes on forever.

Peregrine Wickwrackrum was of two minds about evil: when enough rules get broken, sometimes there is good amid the carnage.

Poor humans; they will all die.""Poor us; we will not.

Pham Nuwen plunked himself down, stretching indolently.

When I began writing science fiction in the middle 60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months.

So much technology, so little talent.

Here I had tried a straightforward extrapolation of technology, and found myself precipitated over an abyss. It's a problem we face every time we consider the creation of intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity - a place where extrapolation breaks down and new models must be applied - and the world will pass beyond our understanding.

We're endangered by our own success.

Intelligence is the handmaiden of flexibility and change.

We will soon create intelligences greater than our own ... When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding.