You know I've read a 1967 sci Fi book by a Ukrainian author where they invented a machine that can copy, create and alter human beings. And a LOT of discussion of what it could mean for humanity. As well as threat of SuperAI.

In a few chapters where people were talking and discussing events one of people was going on and on how computers will rapidly overcome human intelligence and what will happen then.

I found it... Interesting.

Since a lot of talks I had with tech people over the years since like 2015 were remarkably similar. And yet similarity with talks people had in 1960s are striking.

Same points " it's not a question of IF it's a question of when" Etc. Same arguments, same exponential talk, etc.

And I'm with you that.. but also a lot of us pretend or think they understand more than they possible do or could.

We don't really know when an intelligence explosion will happen.

1960s people thought it would happen when computers could do arithmetic million times faster than humans.

We seem to hang on to flops raw compute power, compare it vs human brain - and voila! - if it's higher we got super AI.

We've since long passed 10^16 flops in our supercomputers and yet we're still nowhere near human level AI.

Memory bandwidth kinda slipped away from Kurzwail books.

Maybe ASI will happen tomorrow. Or 10 years from now. Or 20 years from now or maybe it'll never happen we'll just sort if merge with it as we go without any sort of defining rigid event.

My point is - we don't really know. Flops progression was a good guess but it failed spectacularly. We have over 10^18 flops capable computers and we're still 2-3 orders of magnitude behind human brain when trying to emulate it.