Speed superintelligence is quite simply the ability to do what a human can do, but much faster.

Through training, we are able to get faster by optimizing our neural circuitry. The result is that our reactions become faster, allowing our performance to increase. This is most evident when we pair a well-trained athlete with an athlete of a relatively low skill level. To the beginner, everything seems to be progressing at a breakneck pace, barely able to keep up. To the well-trained expert, time seems to be moving at a slow, almost relaxed pace. We often say that the pro makes it all seem effortless.

This optimization through training yields an improvement by a factor of two or three. In a machine, we will realize improvements by a factor of hundreds or thousands. In specific problem areas, we already have machines which are faster than humans at a factor approaching one million times.

Imagine a scenario where you are competing with a machine for a job at a bank. It might be a position processing loans or mortgages, or perhaps managing a portfolio of investments. Both of these jobs already leverage computers for accessing and processing in formation. But today we still rely on human loan officers and portfolio managers to make decisions about which loans or mortgages to approve, which stocks to buy, and when to sell them. But what if we had enough confidence to let the computers make all of these decisions on their own, without supervision? How much more quickly could these computers process loans or make buying and selling decisions on investments? These automated financial agents could easily make decisions and process transactions at a rate that would allow them to take the place of tens or even hundreds of their human counterparts. In fact, they are used extensively in the financial sector today and continue to become more pervasive. Automated trading has been used to accelerate trades for years and has now become available even to the individual investor.

From the perspective of speed and efficiency, machines clearly are more intelligent than humans already. They have become so good at what they do that they make their task seem effortless.