Implications of a Software-Limited Singularity

A number of prominent artificial intelligence (AI) researchers and commentators (Moravec 1999a; Solomonoff 1985; Vinge 1993) have presented versions of the following argument: 1. Continued exponential improvement in computer hardware will deliver inexpensive processing power exceeding that of the human brain within the next several decades. 2. If human-level processing power were inexpensive, then the software for AI with broadly human-level (and then superhuman) cognitive capacities would probably be developed within two decades thereafter.