foom

1. The sound of a muffled explosion.

   And FOOM-FOOM! the two engines burst together into life...

   1983, Richard Bach, Biplane

   2 more examples

   Those flat-trajectory shells would skim straight in, making a roaring sound in the dark: Foom! Foom! Foom!

   2000, James Bradley, Ron Powers, Flags of Our Fathers: Heroes of Iwo Jima

   A soft, distant foom. The lights blinked, then faded. Foom-foom-foom! Explosions, one after another, rocked the tunnel.

   2007, Warren Murphy, James Mullaney, The New Destroyer: Guardian Angel

plural fooms

1. A sudden increase in artificial intelligence such that an AI system becomes extremely powerful.

   Though the programs will surely get better, there are no signs of foom.

   2018, Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   There are some scenarios in which private AI research wouldn't be nationalized: •An unexpected AI foom before anyone realizes what was coming.

   2013, Brian Tomasik, International Cooperation vs. AI Arms Race, page 2

   Some advocates of this foom scenario say that there is an as-yet-undiscovered but very powerful set of related architectural innovations for AI system design, a set that one team could find first and then keep secret from others for long enough.

   2016, Robin Hanson, The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life when Robots Rule the Earth, →ISBN

present singular third person fooms · participle present fooming · participle past foomed · past foomed

1. To exhibit an AI foom.

   The reason an AI can foom so much faster than its society is that an AI can change its basic mental architecture,and humans can’t.

   2013, Robin Hanson, Eliezer Yudkowsky, The Hanson-Yudkowsky AI-Foom Debate, page 216