(C) BoingBoing
This story was originally published by BoingBoing and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



Sir Clive Sinclair on AI, from 2006 [1]

['Rob Beschizza']

Date: 2026-10-01  

In 2006, The BBC reviewed predictions about robotics and AI made in the 1980s. Now, another 20 years later, we can reappraise its appraisal. When Will Intelligent Machines Take Over?



The segment features Sir Clive Sinclair, icon of early home computing, who plainly claims that the endgame of computing technology is AI. In elaborating the mundane specifics, though, he distinguished himself from the segment's "robot armies" tone:

"Education, so that you have an individualized tutor, medicine, an invidual at-home-doctor. All the things that are expensive today because they require human brains could be cheap tomorrow because they require machine brains. It's rather like the industrial revolution, when machines replaced men's muscles. Muscles were expensive. Machines were cheap. Now we can do the same thing in replacing men's minds."

And later, on the prospect of what is now (by executive order) Super General Intelligence:

"a slight quirk here, a slight quirk there, could result in them becoming malevolent in some fashion!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfjFKy0ZOiA

It used to be predicted that robots would one day rule the world, and according to Sir Clive Sinclair, they still might. As part of Newsnight's "Geek Week" series of reports into the IT revolution, Stephen Smith takes a lighthearted look back through the BBC archive to see whether he can uncover any clues as to when, exactly, the seemingly inevitable combination of artificial intelligence and advanced robotics will spell the end of humanity as we know it.



It's ever so weird to be thinking of 2006 as "20 years ago." The iPhone is 20 years old next year.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2026/10/01/sir-clive-sinclair-on-ai-from-2006.html

Published and (C) by BoingBoing
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/boingboing/