The Last Machine
The day a scientist builds a machine comprehensively superior to himself, machine-intelligence will become infinite. This incredible idea is easily reasoned out.
Let us refer to the portentous creation as Machine One. It is superior to its creator in every way, including, importantly, the ambition and ability to build a machine that is superior to its creator. It is only natural, therefore, that Machine One will build a second machine more intelligent than itself, and that this second machine will build a third, still-more intelligent machine, which will build a fourth, which will build a fifth, which will build a sixth... Follow this proposition to its ultimate logical consequences. The last machine in the series is analogous to a god... Perhaps God Himself is a machine that the second-to-last machine in the future series chose to endow with the property of having always existed, and it is only as a result of the retroactive effect of the Last Machine’s future existence, Its bidirectionality along the thermodynamic arrow of time, that It exists now despite the fact that It has not yet been created. |