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Vinge’s column “First Word” (Omni, January 1983) says that people will soon create intelligences greater than their own, and that human history will then reach a kind of singularity beyond which the world passes far beyond human understanding. Copy claim link
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Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source
Date 1983-01 · publication Records dated 1983 → Role Earliest located Register (kind of text) Nonfiction Scope and limits Earliest located within the collection’s bounded search, which read Vinge (1983, 1993) and Ulam’s memoir of von Neumann (1958), and within a second check’s search by a model of another family (Good, Turing, Campbell, Descartes, Lucas, Dreyfus); not a claim that no earlier text exists. The column also considers a route through amplification of human intelligence by computers (‘The singularity then becomes the result of a massive amplification of human intelligence’), which the criterion includes. Paraphrase only, as the dataset’s source requires. The dataset already records this column on A1, A4 and B6 as context.
The evidence 01 primary source Supports the claim
First Word (Omni, January 1983, p. 10) ↗ Omni · 1983-01
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Paraphrase Creating intelligences greater than our own will bring human history to “a kind of singularity”, an intellectual transition after which the world will pass far beyond our understanding; superhuman intelligences are expected in 20 to 100 years.
Location in source p. 10, middle column, paragraphs beginning “There is an important reason why this process won't level off” and “When this happens”
How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher
Machine-checked · 2026-11-04
Source details and check notes Authors Vernor Vinge Version One-page scan hosted by gwern.net, read as an image by the pre-1996 candidate search and a later machine check. Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-06 Language English (en) Attribution Vernor Vinge, "First Word", Omni, January 1983, p. 10. Reuse No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata and labelled paraphrases only: the inspected scan is a third-party copy whose permission to host is not established. Phrases in quotation marks inside a paraphrase identify the source's wording. Check notes Candidate pack passage, antecedent texts (research/prehistory). The paraphrase is Selekoa’s, written from the text read for the candidate pack; it is not a quotation and was not machine-matched. labelled paraphrase, with the column’s words in quotation marks. No human editorial review. Status and meaning Editorial status. Machine-checked . Machines found this record and checked it against its sources; no person accepted it individually. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.
Relation. A passage of the document meets the proposition’s criterion. The record documents what the text states, in its register (fiction and satire are labelled); it is not evidence that the proposition is true and implies no influence on or from another text.
Date. Omni, January 1983, p. 10, according to Vinge’s 2005 bibliography; the scan shows the byline, column title and page but no masthead.
Record ID pre-u03-vinge-1983-first-word