Karpathy: why pre-2000 sci-fi failed to predict AI's arrival
Hesamation · x · 2026-11-05
Andrej Karpathy argues pre-2000 sci-fi largely missed AI (with few counter-examples like HAL). Getting AI right from the 1970s would require inferring three prerequisites: (1) digital knowledge work — most of the economy's knowledge work moving onto billions of cheap screens; (2) the internet — a global network following ARPANET and Licklider's 1963 "Intergalactic Computer Network"; (3) big data — a compounding repository of traces of how people reason and create, the raw material for training AI.
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