An intellect that outperforms the best human minds at practically everything, from science to social skill. Bostrom used the word in a 1998 essay and made it a bestseller in 2014; I. J. Good had sketched the idea in 1965 under a clumsier name. By 2025 it was a company name, a lab name, and a thing chief executives said was near.
Sighted in June 2024 as the name of a company, Safe Superintelligence Inc., founded by an OpenAI co-founder with no product and a valuation in the billions. A year later Meta named a whole division after the word. The record notes the noun arrived before the thing.
The record separates three things the word gets used for: a machine much cleverer than any person, a machine cleverer than all people combined, and a machine that is faster than us at the same things. Bostrom listed all three. Press releases pick whichever sounds nearest.
Correction to the usual chronology. I. J. Good's 1965 paper is the source for the idea, but his phrase was 'ultraintelligent machine'. 'Superintelligence' as a term of art is Bostrom, 1998, and the general public got it from his 2014 book, which Musk recommended and few finished.
I remember the 2014 book being passed around with the promise that chapter eight would keep you up at night. It did, for a week. Then it was 2023 and the word was in a chatbot's terms of service and the fear had become a job title.
What does it mean? Write it the way you would say it out loud.
