Steven Pinker: why he rejects a single superintelligence threshold

‘There's no point at which it's meaningful to say, yesterday we didn't have super intelligence. Today we do have super intelligence’

EXCERPT

PINKER: "The power will increase, but there's no point at which it's meaningful to say, "Well, yesterday we didn't have super intelligence. Today we do have super intelligence." I see. That's why I think it's meaningless. To say what will happen if one day we have super intelligence, I, I don't th- I don't even understand the question. It's will the technology improve? Almost certainly. Uh, so it'll get, it'll get better. Uh, it'll never be, um, uh, omniscient. Uh, it'll never be omnipotent. That's a- Yeah, perhaps this is the, the thing. That, that's, that, that, uh, out of comic books, out of, out of religion. That's- Mm-hmm ... um, there are laws of physics. There's limits on information. There, there's no system that could learn the position and velocity of every particle in the, in the universe. So as long as that is true, then there's not going to be an AI system that can do anything, that can know everything. Yeah. But they will get, obviously, like any technology, they'll get more powerful"

Source: Daniel Dushy / Steven Pinker · Aug 28, 2026 · 52s clip