foom

English

Etymology

Imitative. Compare boom.

Interjection

foom

1. The sound of a muffled explosion.
   • 1983, Richard Bach, Biplane:

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

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

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

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

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

Noun

foom (plural fooms)

1. A sudden increase in artificial intelligence such that an AI system becomes extremely powerful.
   • 2013, Brian Tomasik, International Cooperation vs. AI Arms Race, page 2:

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

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

     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.

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

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

Verb

foom (third-person singular simple present fooms, present participle fooming, simple past and past participle foomed)

1. To exhibit an AI foom.
   • 2013, Robin Hanson, Eliezer Yudkowsky, The Hanson-Yudkowsky AI-Foom Debate, page 216:

     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.

Anagrams

• FOMO, FoMO, mofo, moof

Middle English

Noun

foom

1. Alternative form of fom