it's better to have a name that doesn't give a new person all kinds of weird initial associations as their first impression.
Yeah, though I buy into much of what Kurzweil has to say, Singularity has always rubbed me the wrong way - too much of Omega Immanentizing the Eschaton for me.
Is there any other snappy term out there for the idea that we're headed for very big changes through exponential performance improvement in lots of technologies?
Yeah, though I buy into much of what Kurzweil has to say, Singularity has always rubbed me the wrong way - too much of Omega Immanentizing the Eschaton for me.
Changing the name doesn't change the fact that they're trying to Immanentize the Eschaton.
http://singularity.org/blog/2013/01/30/we-are-now-the-machine-intelligence-research-institute-miri/
As Risto Saarelma pointed out on IRC, "Volcano Lair Doom Institute" would have been cooler, but this is pretty good too. As the word "Singularity" has pretty much lost its meaning, it's better to have a name that doesn't give a new person all kinds of weird initial associations as their first impression. And "Machine Intelligence Research Institute" is appropriately descriptive while still being general enough.