and the author reproduces tabooing in his willful avoidance of attempting to define the term “intelligence”.
Whatever the author’s motivations, that definition is unnecessary in the present context. As Chalmers noted (sect. 3), the key premises in the argument for the singularity can be formulated without relying on the concept of intelligence. What is needed is instead the notion of a self-amplifying capacity, coupled with the claims that (1) we can create systems that exhibit that capacity to a greater degree than we do and that (2) increases in that capacity will be correlated with changes in some property or properties that we care about.
Whatever the author’s motivations, that definition is unnecessary in the present context. As Chalmers noted (sect. 3), the key premises in the argument for the singularity can be formulated without relying on the concept of intelligence. What is needed is instead the notion of a self-amplifying capacity, coupled with the claims that (1) we can create systems that exhibit that capacity to a greater degree than we do and that (2) increases in that capacity will be correlated with changes in some property or properties that we care about.