Timeline of AI timelines

This is a timeline of AI timelines, the study of advances in artificial intelligence, in particular when artificial general intelligence will be created.

Big picture

Time period	Development summary	More details

Full timeline

Year of prediction	Predicted year	Predictor	Details
1965	1985		AI pioneer Herbert A. Simon writes: "machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do."
1988	2010		Hans Moravec writes: Behold my book Mind Children. Within, I project that, in 2010 or thereabouts, we shall achieve strong AI. I am not calling it “Artificial General Intelligence” because this term will not be coined for another 15 years or so.
1997			The term "artificial general intelligence" is probably first used by Mark Gubrud in a discussion of the implications of fully automated military production and operations.
2001	2023, 2049, 2059		Ray Kurzweil writes: I have calculated that matching the intelligence of a human brain requires 2 * 10^16 ops/sec* and this will become available in a $1000 computer in 2023. 26 years after that, in 2049, a $1000 computer will have ten billion times more computing power than a human brain; and in 2059, that computer will cost one cent.
2011 (January 16)	2028, 2050, 2150		"Machines will achieve human-level intelligence by 2028 (median estimate: 10% chance), by 2050 (median estimate: 50% chance), or by 2150 (median estimate: 90% chance), according to an informal poll at the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) Winter Intelligence conference on machine intelligence in January."
2012–2013	2022, 2040		"Vincent Müller and Nick Bostrom of FHI conducted a poll of four groups of AI experts in 2012-13. Combined, the median date by which they gave a 10% chance of human-level AI was 2022, and the median date by which they gave a 50% chance of human-level AI was 2040."
2016 (June 9)			Bill Gates says that achieving “human-level” AI will take “at least 5 times as long as what Ray Kurzweil says.
2017			A study finds 50% of AI researchers accord a 50% probability to "High level machine intelligence" (HLMI) by 2040, while 20% say that 50% probability will not be reached until 2100 or later. The survey finds an aggregated probability distribution with a 25%-75% confidence interval ranging from 2040 to well past 2100.
2021 (August 17)	2036, 2060, 2100		Holden Karnofsky predicts: "there's more than a 10% chance of ... PASTA-like "transformative AI" within 15 years (by 2036); a ~50% chance we'll see it within 40 years (by 2060); and a ~2/3 chance we'll see it this century (by 2100)."
2022 (May 30)	2029		Elon Musk tells Jack Dorsey via tweet that AGI would be achieved by 2029. Gary Marcus would criticize this, challenging Musk to a $100,000 bet.
2022 (June–August)	2059		"The aggregate forecast time to a 50% chance of HLMI was 37 years, i.e. 2059 (not including data from questions about the conceptually similar Full Automation of Labor, which in 2016 received much later estimates). This timeline has become about eight years shorter in the six years since 2016, when the aggregate prediction put 50% probability at 2061, i.e. 45 years out. Note that these estimates are conditional on “human scientific activity continu[ing] without major negative disruption.”"

Meta information on the timeline

How the timeline was built

The initial version of the timeline was written by Sebastian.

Funding information for this timeline is available.

Feedback and comments

Feedback for the timeline can be provided at the following places:

• FIXME

What the timeline is still missing

• probably go back to people like Turing, IJ Good, or whoever who first came up with ideas around AGI; what did they say about when it would be created?
• dartmouth conference and initial optimistic ideas on when AGI would be created
• would be cool to include the various "standalone"/"self-contained" AI timeline methods and when they were first used https://wiki.issarice.com/wiki/Category:AI_timelines_arguments
• https://openai.com/blog/ai-and-compute/ -- this was quite an influential blog post in LW/EA communities
• https://www.gwern.net/Scaling-hypothesis -- this page has a lot of details on scaling laws
• what are the various AI benchmarks and how do progress on those benchmarks look like?
• the stuff in this blog post (especially the stuff in the table) https://www.cold-takes.com/where-ai-forecasting-stands-today/
• this thread might be notable https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/hQysqfSEzciRazx8k/forecasting-thread-ai-timelines
• look through posts here https://www.greaterwrong.com/tag/ai-timelines to see if any seem important
• similarly, check https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/ai-forecasting
• maybe look at https://www.greaterwrong.com/s/B9Qc8ifidAtDpsuu8
• controversy like https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KnQs55tjxWopCzKsk/the-ai-timelines-scam
• https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ax695frGJEzGxFBK4/biology-inspired-agi-timelines-the-trick-that-never-works
• look at metaculus threads and how predictions have changed over time e.g. [1], [2], [3]
• something something gary marcus
• https://intelligence.org/2017/10/13/fire-alarm/
• probably include some famous people's views like Bill Gates https://lukemuehlhauser.com/bill-gates-on-ai-timelines/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#Predictions
• might be able to copy some rows from Timeline of artificial intelligence, Timeline of AI safety, Timeline of machine learning
• the AI Impacts experts survey paper from 2016 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.08807.pdf
• look through posts at https://aiimpacts.org/category/ai-timelines/

• https://thenextweb.com/news/what-is-the-technological-singularity#.tnw_4ol0E0Vr