The Law of Accelerating Returns
An essay by Ray Kurzweil, The Kurzweil Library, dated 7 March 2001. The kurzweilai.net copy captured on 7 November 2001 states that the essay was written in November 2000 and published on 7 March 2001; the Kurzweil Library page read for the pack labels it January 2001 and is itself dated 1 January 2025.
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- Authors credited
- No authorship claim recorded yet. The source record lists Ray Kurzweil.
- Dates
- No date claim recorded yet. The source record gives the publication date as 2001-03-07.
- Exact source
- The Law of Accelerating Returns The Kurzweil Library (writingsbyraykurzweil.com), essay page · published 2001-03-07 · Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-31 (SHA-256 b1235f63983668667c5abade21b45d8084f3487cc19648396665252510f29aac). The Kurzweil Library page labelled "essay: the Law of Accelerating Returns. author: by Ray Kurzweil date: January 2001", with a page date of January 1, 2025. Not compared with the kurzweilai.net copies of 2001 (captures listed in retrievalFailures). The cross-family check of 2026-11-01 read the kurzweilai.net copy captured on 7 November 2001, which states that the essay was written in November 2000 and published on 7 March 2001, and found the quoted passages it compared.Archived copy, captured 2001-11-07: The Law of Accelerating Returns. Captured 245 days after the recorded publication date. An archive copy shows only what the archive retrieved on 2001-11-07. It does not prove what the page said earlier, and it can differ from the copy checked on 2026-10-31.
Appears in
- Machine succession, scale and acceleration: propositions in located texts, 1979–2026 →6 records on this document
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Articulates · 5
Propositions whose criterion a passage of this document meets. The record says what the text states, in its register; it is not evidence that the proposition is true.
- Machines succeed humans as the leading intelligenceKurzweil's essay of 2001 states that most of the intelligence of our civilisation will ultimately be nonbiological, and that this "does not imply the end of biological intelligence, even if thrown from its perch of evolutionary superiority", holding that the civilisation will remain human.2001-03-07 · publication · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗Machines succeed humans as the leading intelligence: propositions page →
- Human minds transferred into machinesKurzweil's essay of 2001 states that a scanned brain's entire organisation, including its memory, can be re-created on a neural computer, and that human mental processes will need to be ported to a more suitable computational substrate.2001-03-07 · publication · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗Human minds transferred into machines: propositions page →
- Superiority by many orders of magnitudeKurzweil's essay of 2001 states that by the end of the century the nonbiological intelligence of civilisation will be trillions of trillions of times more powerful than human intelligence.2001-03-07 · publication · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗Superiority by many orders of magnitude: propositions page →
- Machine intelligence as a physical or cosmic processKurzweil's essay of 2001 states that technological evolution is an outgrowth and continuation of biological evolution, governed by a law of accelerating returns that applies to any evolutionary process, and that the emerging intelligence will be the next step in evolution.2001-03-07 · publication · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗Machine intelligence as a physical or cosmic process: propositions page →
- Machine intelligence spreads beyond EarthKurzweil's essay of 2001 states that the growth of computation is an ongoing exponential "at least until" the intelligence of human-machine civilisation saturates the universe, and that once a species creates computation, "it is only a matter of a few centuries" before its intelligence "begins to expand outward at the speed of light or greater".2001-03-07 · publication · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗Machine intelligence spreads beyond Earth: propositions page →
Bears on · 1
Propositions a passage comes close to without meeting the criterion; each record names what is missing.
- Succession by machines would be acceptable or desirableKurzweil's essay of 2001 holds that the Singularity is not a danger to be avoided but the goal of civilisation, and regards the freeing of the human mind from its physical limitations of scope and duration as the necessary next step in evolution.2001-03-07 · publication · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗Succession by machines would be acceptable or desirable: propositions page →
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