Currently, the most keenly awaited technological development is
an all-purpose artificial intelligence — perhaps even an
intelligence that would revise itself and grow at an ever-
accelerating rate, until it enacts millennial transformations.
Since the invention of artificial minds seventy years ago,
computer scientists have felt on the verge of building a
generally intelligent machine. Yet somehow this goal, like the
horizon, keeps retreating as fast as it is approached. In
contrast, we think that an all-purpose artificial intelligence
will — for the foreseeable future — remain elusive. But
understanding why will unlock other revolutions. AI's wrong
turn? Assuming that the best methods for reasoning and thinking
— for true intelligence — are those that can be applied
successfully to any content. Equip a computer with these general
methods, input some facts to apply them to, increase hardware
speed, and a dazzlingly high intelligence seems fated to emerge.
Yet one never materializes, and achieved levels of gen