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Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.

Vernor Vinge

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Vernor Vinge
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: October 2
Computer Scientist
Mathematician
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Waukesha
Wisconsin
Vernor Steffen Vinge
Largest
Small
Even
Things
Avalanche
Triggered
Avalanches

More quotes by Vernor Vinge

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IA is something that is proceeding very naturally, in most cases not even recognized by its developers for what it is.
Vernor Vinge
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Poor humans they will all die.Poor us we will not.
Vernor Vinge
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I say, let's learn more and then speculate.
Vernor Vinge
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How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails.
Vernor Vinge
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Well, what do you know, Pham said. Butterflies in jackboots.
Vernor Vinge
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I am suggesting that we recognize that in network and interface research there is something as profound (and potential wild) as Artificial Intelligence.
Vernor Vinge
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When people speak of creating superhumanly intelligent beings, they are usually imagining an AI project.
Vernor Vinge
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Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.
Vernor Vinge
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Peregrine Wickwrackrum was of two minds about evil: when enough rules get broken, sometimes there is good amid the carnage.
Vernor Vinge
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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.
Vernor Vinge
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Effective translation of natural languages comes awfully close to requiring a sentient translator program.
Vernor Vinge
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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?
Vernor Vinge
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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.
Vernor Vinge
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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.
Vernor Vinge
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The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors.
Vernor Vinge
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I have come to kill you.The death's heads shrugged. You have come to try.
Vernor Vinge
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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.
Vernor Vinge
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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.
Vernor Vinge
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But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.
Vernor Vinge
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Once upon a time I was such a good liar I could talk the fish right into my mouths.
Vernor Vinge