> It is more probable than not that, within the twentieth century, an ultraintelligent machine will be built and that it will be the last invention that man need make, since it will lead to an “intelligence explosion.”

It’s not uncommon to find these kinds of predictions from the twentieth century, which of course with hindsight can seem wildly optimistic.

But I think there are understandable reasons for that optimism.

Imagine you were born in the early twentieth century, say roughly 1910 +/- 10 years. If you had been born then, you would probably have lived through all of the following:

- The transition from horses to motor vehicles

- The invention of the airplane, from first flight to supersonic

- Not one but two world wars

- The splitting of the atom

- Human spaceflight, including traveling to the moon

If you’d been born slightly earlier, you could also add electrification to that list.

When I compare what I’ve seen in my life so far, I don’t think anything comes close (for better and worse) to even one of those things. So yeah, of course they were optimistic about technological progress—look at what they just lived through.