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Pac-Man running at 1 million frames per second
In What does technology want?, Kevin Kelly argued that technology is on an evolutionary path. In some real sense, technology is alive and growing. It seeks out to improve itself at an ever faster rate. And it seems that technology currently loves software. The difference between a recent processor and a processor from 10 years ago is ~10x. Yet it is not like Google is the same as it was, except 10x faster. Without better software, our video games would be like old-school Pac-Man, except that they would run at 1 million frames per second. If that sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is: software has improved thousandfolds.
I don’t think we are going to see an evil artificial intelligence trying to enslave us in the coming decades. However, we are going to get seriously insane software. It is not going to look like what we have today, only faster. It is probably unimaginable right now.