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94 people, organisations and other records · 122 relationships · 34 claims about a valueEverything recorded up to the chosen year, whether or not still in effect · Undated records included
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Moravec’s essay argues that more processing power would let experiments, optimizing compilers and symbolic mathematics systems speed up research, and that the gains would improve the very systems being used, so that they contribute to their own improvement. Copy claim link
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Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source
Date 1979-02 · publication Wording attested 2001-07-10. Author-hosted HTML; the earliest Internet Archive capture, of 2001-07-10, is byte-identical to the copy retrieved in 2026. Not compared with the Analog pages. Claimed date 1976-07-21. The text is dated July 21, 1976, and marked "this version 1978"; earlier versions were not retrieved. Role Articulation Register (kind of text) Nonfiction Scope of the passage Research tools contributing to their own improvement. Scope and limits The improving systems are research tools used by people, not an autonomous AI. Its wording is attested only from 2001, so it cannot be the earliest located record.
The evidence 01 primary source Supports the claim
Today’s Computers, Intelligent Machines and Our Future ↗ Hans Moravec · 1979-02
Archived copy, captured 2001-07-10: Today’s Computers, Intelligent Machines and Our Future ↗
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Source excerpt “Gains made this way would improve the very systems being used, causing more speedup. The intermediate results would be inefficient kludges busily contributing to their own improvement.” Location in source Section 1, "Harangue", final paragraph before "Section 2: Measuring Processing Power"
Machine-checked · 2026-10-06
Source details and check notes Authors Hans Moravec Version Author-hosted HTML in the directory general.articles/1978, retrieved 2026-10-06 (hash matched the pre-1996 candidate search); identical to the capture of 2001-07-10. Author’s project archive, Carnegie Mellon University. Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-06 Language English (en) Archive copy Open archived copy, captured 2001-07-10: Today’s Computers, Intelligent Machines and Our Future ↗ . An archive copy shows only what the archive retrieved on 2001-07-10. It does not prove what the page said earlier, and it can differ from the copy checked on 2026-10-06.Attribution Hans Moravec, "Today’s Computers, Intelligent Machines and Our Future", Analog 99 (2), February 1979. 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 Checked against the retrieved HTML on 2026-10-06. 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 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. Issue of Analog (99, no. 2) given in the author’s publication list.
Record ID ts-a3-moravec-1979