Hans Moravec? Timothy Leary? Vince Rause? Grant Fjermedal? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: The creation of the first living beings on planet Earth was an epochal change. The prominent roboticist Hans Moravec has stated that the advent of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) will be a change comparable to the transition from non-life to life. Would you please help me to find a citation for this remark?
Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1984 “The First International Symposium on Robotics Research” was held at the Bretton Woods Hotel in New Hampshire. Hans Moravec delivered a paper titled “Locomotion, Vision, and Intelligence” which culminated with the following paragraph. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
Machines as intelligent as humans will, in their generality, be capable of superhuman feats and will be able to do the science and engineering to build yet more powerful successors. I leave (almost certainly futile) speculation about the future evolution of this process for a future essay. It is clear to me we are on the threshold of a change in the universe comparable to the transition from nonlife to life.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In February 1986 “The Pittsburgh Press” published a profile of Hans Moravec titled “My Robot, My Self” by Vince Rause. The article began with the following epigraph:2
“It’s clear to me that we are on the threshold of a change in the universe comparable to the transition from non-life to life.”
— Hans Moravec
In October 1986 “Omni” magazine published a speculative article about AI by Grant Fjermedal who mentioned the quotation:3
. . . reminded me of something Moravec had written not too long ago: “We are on a threshold of a change in the universe comparable to the transition from nonlife to life.”
In 1987 the Associated Press published a story about Moravec which included the following passage:4
“We owe our existence to organic evolution. But we owe it little loyalty,” Moravec writes. “We are on a threshold of a change in the universe comparable to the transition from non-life to life.”
Moravec’s projections are based on his research showing that, on the average, the cost of computation has halved every two years from the time of the primitive adding machines of the late 19th century to the supercomputers of the 1980s.
In 1994 psychologist Timothy Leary published “Chaos and Cyber Culture” which contained a section about artificial life written by Eric Gullichsen who mentioned the quotation by Moravec:5
Some silicon visionaries believe that natural evolution of the human species (or at least their branch of it) is near completion. They are no longer interested in merely procreating, but in designing their successors. Carnegie-Mellon robotics scientist Hans Moravec writes,
We owe our existence to organic evolution. But we owe it little loyalty. We are on the threshold of a change in the universe comparable to the transition from nonlife to life.
In 2002 an edition of “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley was supplemented with thirteen related articles. The 1986 article by Grant Fjermedal was included; thus, the Moravec quotation achieved continued circulation.6
In conclusion, Hans Moravec deserves credit for this quotation. He wrote it in an article titled “Locomotion, Vision, and Intelligence” in 1984. Journalists Vince Rause and Grant Fjermedal later reprinted the quotation while ascribing the words to Moravec.
Image Notes: Abstract illustration of a brain-like network from Growtika at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to the anonymous AI researcher whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- 1984 Copyright, Robotics Research: The First International Symposium, Edited by Michael Brady and Richard Paul, Locomotion, Vision, and Intelligence by Hans P. Moravec, Start Page 215, Quote Page 223, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1986 February 16, The Pittsburgh Press, Section: The Pittsburgh Press Sunday Magazine, My Robot, My Self by Vince Rause (Epigraph of article), Quote Page 4, Column 1, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1986 October, Omni, Volume 9, Number 1, Artificial Intelligence: Surrogate Brains: by Grant Fjermedal, Start Page 38, Quote Page 160, Column 2, Omni Publications International, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1987 May 17, Centre Daily Times, Prof’s vision: Living forever through robotics by Michael Hirsh (Associated Press), Quote Page D5, Column 4 and 5, State College, Pennsylvania. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1994 Copyright, Chaos and Cyber Culture by Timothy Leary, Cybernetic Methods for Attaining Immortality (Artificial Life “In Silico”) by Eric Gullichsen, Quote Page 199, Ronin Publishing Inc., Berkeley, California. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 2002, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley with Thirteen Related Readings, Article: Artificial Intelligence, Surrogate Brain by Grant Fjermedal, Start Page 292, Quote Page 296, Everbind Anthologies, Lodi, New Jersey. (Verified with scans) ↩︎