Claim · 2008-03-12 · revision · Stated in source · Supported

The fourth postscript to Bostrom's 'How Long Before Superintelligence?', which the author dates 12 March 2008, uses 'artificial general intelligence (AGI)'.

One recorded claim. The claim panel gives its qualification, the source passages with their place in each source, and how it was checked.

What it connects

How Long Before Superintelligence? → uses the name →

Where it appears

No collection page holds this claim. It is listed with its records in the explorer.

Claim and evidence

How Long Before Superintelligence?uses the name ↓

Machine-checked, not reviewed by an editorStated in sourceSupported

Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source

Date: 2008-03-12 · revision Records dated 2008 →

Scope and limitsA use in a postscript added a decade after the paper; the 1997/1998 text is not shown to use the term. The postscript is dated 12 March 2008 by the author’s header, a stated revision date; the cross-family check found its wording in a capture of 22 March 2008. It is not backdated to the paper’s 1997 copyright or 1998 journal year.

The evidence 01

primary sourceSupports the claim

How Long Before Superintelligence?

nickbostrom.com (author's site) · 1998

Cite the original source

Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.

Source excerpt

“There seems to be somewhat more interest now in artificial general intelligence (AGI) research than there was a few years ago.”

Location in source Postscript IV (12 March, 2008), second paragraph

How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher

Machine-checked · 2026-10-31

Source details and check notes

Authors: Nick Bostrom
Version: Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29 (SHA-256 a063c6e28b6ae6777725b5c16f0804a24d07dd640fa18cb9fd2126802e379199). Author's current HTML page (redirected to https://nickbostrom.com/papers/how-long-before-superintelligence/): '(1997) Copyright', revised 25 October 1998 with a postscript, further postscripts added 28 August 2000, 30 October 2005 and 12 March 2008. The 1998 journal text (Int. Jour. of Futures Studies vol. 2) was not retrieved; wording older than the current page is not attested by this copy.
Canonical address: Open the canonical source ↗
Accessed: 2026-10-29
Language: English (en)
Attribution: Nick Bostrom, “How Long Before Superintelligence?”, 1998.
Reuse: No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution.
Check notes: Candidate pack passage, Kinds of AI and technical history (research/technical-history). The quotation (21 words) matched the text retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29. Matching ignored differences of whitespace, case, quotation marks, dashes, PDF line-break hyphens and Unicode compatibility forms, so the source’s typography can differ. A cross-family machine check (31 October 2026, item 124) re-read the record’s sources and found that they support what the record states. Its point that the author-stated postscript date is a revision date, kept apart from the capture was applied at admission. No human editorial review.

Status and meaning

Editorial status. Not reviewed by an editor. An exploratory record that no editor has accepted. This status does not say whether a person has read any linked passage. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.

Relation. A passage of the document uses a name for a family of methods or a term, in the sense the concept’s naming criterion describes or, where labelled, in another sense. The record documents the use; it is not evidence that the name began there, and it implies no influence on or from another text.

Date. Date the author’s header gives for adding the fourth postscript: a stated revision date, not a verified publication date. A capture of 22 March 2008 attests the wording.

Record ID th-term-agi-bostrom-2008-postscript