The first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.

When we are headed the wrong way, the last thing we need is progress.

The cognitive functioning of a human brain depends on a delicate orchestration of many factors, especially during the critical stages of embryo development-and it is much more likely that this self-organizing structure, to be enhanced, needs to be carefully balanced, tuned, and cultivated rather than simply flooded with some extraneous potion.

For healthy adult people, the really big thing we can foresee are ways of intervening in the ageing process, either by slowing or reversing it.

How can we trace out the links between actions that people take today and really long-term outcomes for humanity - outcomes that stretch out indefinitely into the future? I call this effort macrostrategy - that is, to think about the really big strategic situation for having a positive impact on the long-term future. There's the butterfly effect: A small change in an initial condition could have arbitrarily large consequences.

Human nature is a work in progress.

We would want the solution to the safety problem before somebody figures out the solution to the AI problem.