Soft takeoff

A soft takeoff refers to an AGI that would self-assemble over a period of months, years or decades. This would be due to either the learning algorithm being too demanding for the hardware or because the AI relied on experiencing feedback from the real-world that would have to be played out in real time.

Vernor Vinge, Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil have all expressed the view that “soft takeoff” is preferable to a “hard takeoff” as it would be both safer and easier to engineer.