In a 1998 statement, I.J. Good reversed his intelligence-explosion optimism — 'survival' should read 'extinction'

The man who originated the intelligence-explosion idea (claim-ij-good-1965-ultraintelligent-machine-coined-intelligence-explosion) appears to have recanted its optimism late in life. Per Wikipedia's biography, in a 1998 autobiographical statement I.J. Good wrote that the opening line of his 1965 paper — "The survival of man depends on the early construction of an ultra-intelligent machine" — should have had "survival" replaced by "extinction," reasoning that an ultraintelligent machine's power would not reliably serve human ends. The statement is reported to conclude that "we are lemmings."

If confirmed, the reversal complicates the standard framing of Good as the founding techno-optimist of superintelligence: the same author moves from the machine as humanity's salvation to the machine as its extinction agent. That arc places Good directly alongside the vault's AI-existential-risk cluster — claim-yao-frames-ai-as-extinction-level-new-species reaching for species-extinction language from complexity theory — and shows the pessimistic pole was voiced by the very person who defined the optimistic one.

Sourcing caveat, load-bearing. The claim rests on a single Tier 4 aggregator relaying an unpublished autobiographical statement conveyed through Good's assistant, Leslie Pendleton. It is surprising, it inverts the received view, and its primary is hard to access — three reasons the sourcing floor demands a direct read before this advances. Preserved flag: [surprising biographical claim; needs primary].