Takeoff

The process by which a system rapidly moves past the human capability frontier.

What it commits you to

Takeoff is any process in which a system's capability increases substantially faster than the resources invested in it. Bostrom's distinction between slow and fast takeoff turns on whether the transition is gradual enough to be monitored and shaped, or fast enough to be completed between two checks. Almost every governance instrument depends on that distinction and very few can actually detect it.

Which realms lean on this

Every realm has to keep a system honest. These are the terms that say out loud what the other kinds keep implicit.

alignment · 5 realms — The Benthamite Foundry, The Existential Wilds, The Longview Foundry, The Stoic Ramparts, The Ubuntu Weave.

Canon that discusses this

modern · 2014
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
Bostrom separates the question of how a superintelligence could arise from the question of what to do about it, and works through takeoff, the orthogonality thesis, and the instrumental convergence argument. The paperclip example and the value-alignment problem both come from here, and the book made the field's vocabulary. The excerpt below paraphrases the suddenness argument rather than quoting the 2014 book.

Takeoff

What it commits you to

Which realms lean on this

Canon that discusses this

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

See also

Fast takeoff

Kurtosis

FOOM

Capability threshold