read.roonscape.ai/p/agi-futures

This sentence is incorrect in two separate ways.

1. Nike Zeus did not run on a "microcomputer." The Nike Zeus system was a 1950s–60s Bell Labs / Western Electric missile-defense computer. A microcomputer is a later class of machine built around a microprocessor. The National Bureau of Standards explains that "the heart of the microcomputer is the central processing unit (CPU), which is also referred to as a microprocessor," and Smithsonian materials place mass-market microcomputers in the mid-1970s, e.g. the Altair 8800 in 1975.

2. The memory claim is numerically wrong. Bell Labs' published Nike Zeus documentation says the Target Intercept Computer had 4,096 25-bit words of variable memory and 24,576 25-bit words of permanent memory. Even taking only the 4,096-word figure, that is 12,800 bytes, not "just enough to store a kilobyte of text." So both the machine type and the memory-size characterization are inaccurate.

This compresses several historical details into a form that is not accurate.

• The 30,000 figure refers to tablets and fragments, not to 30,000 separate literary works. The British Museum describes the Library of Ashurbanipal as "a collection of over 30,000 clay tablets and fragments." A single work could span multiple tablets, so equating tablets/fragments with distinct "works" overstates the number of works.
• The claim that "the library was burnt down again and again" is also not supported by the standard historical account. The British Museum describes Nineveh as having been consumed by fire around 612 BC, and notes that the clay tablets were often preserved by that fire because they were baked harder. Its research project likewise refers to the library material falling during the conquest of Nineveh in 612 BC. Those sources describe a destruction associated with the fall of Nineveh, not repeated burnings of the same library.

So the sentence is inaccurate both about what the 30,000 number counts and about the library having been burned repeatedly.