The age of em : work, love, and life when robots rule the Earth

439 Pages·2016·6.77 MB·English

by  Hanson

THE AGE OF EM

THE AGE OF
E M
work, love, and life when
robots rule the earth
ROBIN HANSON
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1
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First Edition published in 2016
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preface
This book has been many years in the making.
One night in the 1980s, as an awkward 20-something software engineer,
I had a vivid dream. I had just read a Science News article on computing
image textures, and the accompanying images had looked so real. In my
dream, I saw a vast future city, where everyone lived in virtual reality, and I
saw one man alone in a small apartment buried deep in the city. Not much
happened in my dream, but even so I felt a deep sympathy for this man, and
curiosity about his world.
In 1993, I returned to graduate school, this time in economics. (I’d studied
physics and philosophy of science before.) During my first Christmas break,
I rebelled against school pressures by whimsically applying basic economic
principles to a common science-fiction scenario: human minds “uploaded”
into computers (Hanson 1994b).
The techies who dominate science fiction and technology futurism often
say that careful analysis can sometimes let us foresee the outlines of future
technologies, but not their social consequences. However, I found that sim-
ple economic analysis says plenty. I once loved science fiction, but the more
I’ve learned, the less I can overlook how little of it makes sense; even stories
where the physics is mostly right get the economics laughably wrong.
About 15 years ago, at the opening reception of a small interdisciplinary
conference, I broke the ice by asking an English professor, “Why do you
guys hate economists?” He answered simply, “You know.” That sort of thing
breaks my heart. I read widely, learn from and contribute to many fields, and
see myself more as a scholar in general than an economist in particular.
Eleven years ago I was awarded tenure as an economics professor at George
Mason University. I took advantage of tenure’s freedom to explore whatever
topics piqued my interest each week. But I eventually realized that, to have
a lasting legacy, I needed to focus on a book. But what topic could draw me
in enough to keep all the other fascinating topics at bay? I picked this one.
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preface
If the future matters more than the past, because we can influence it, why
do we have far more historians than futurists? Many say that this is because
we just can’t know the future. While we can project social trends, disruptive
technologies will change those trends, and no one can say where that will
take us. In this book, I’ve tried to prove that conventional wisdom wrong,
by analyzing in unprecedented breadth and detail the social implications
of minds “uploaded” into computers, a.k.a. “brain emulations,” or “ems” for
short. While ems are hardly sure to appear, their chances seem high enough
to justify substantial analysis.
My priority in this book has been to show just how many reasonable
forecasts one can make about such a scenario, if one just applies standard
consensus theories from relevant fields. Alas, achieving this priority comes
somewhat at the cost of accessibility and readability; this book is dense, and
reads more like an encyclopedia than a narrative.
I feel now like a traveler who has spied on a distant land from the safety of
nearby hills, never actually meeting any specific person, or hearing specific
words. I’ve returned home, with much to say, but mostly hungry for human
communion. I’ve never felt as intellectually isolated or at risk as when writ-
ing this book, and I hope my desert days end now, as readers like you join me
in discussing The Age of Em.
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acknowledgments
For their comments, I thank Paul Christiano, Peter Twieg, Katja Grace, Carl
Shulman, Tyler Cowen, Fabio Rojas, Bonnie Hanson, Luke Muehlhauser,
Nikola Danaylov, Bryan Caplan, Michael Abramowicz, Gaverick Matheny,
Paul Crowley, Peter McCluskey, Sam Wilson, Chris Hibbert, Thomas
Hanson, Daniel Houser, Kaj Sotala, Rong Rong, David Friedman, Michael
LaTorra, Ben Goertzel, Steve Omohundro, David Levy, Jim Miller, Mike
Halsall, Peggy Jackson, Jan-Erik Strasser, Robert Lecnik, Andrew Hanson,
Shannon Friedman, Karl Mattingly, Ken Kittlitz, Teresa Hartnett, Giulio
Prisco, David Pearce, Stephen Van Sickle, David Brin, Chris Yung, Adam
Gurri, Matthew Graves, Dave Lindbergh, Scott Aaronson, Gary Drescher,
Robert Koslover, Don Hanson, Michael Raimondi, William MacAskill, Eli
Dourado, David McFadzean, Bruce Brewington, Marc Ringuette, D aniel
Miessler, Keith Henson, Garett Jones, Alex Tabarrok, Lee Corbin, Norman
Hardy, Charles Zheng, Stuart Armstrong, Vernor Vinge, Ted Goertzel,
Mark Lillibridge, Michael Chwe, Olle Häggström, Jaan Tallinn, Joshua Fox,
Chris Hallquist, Joshua Fox, Kevin Simler, Eric Falkenstein, Lotta Moberg,
Ute Shaw, Matt Franklin, Nick Beckstead, Robyn Weaving, François Rideau,
Eloise Rosen, Peter Voss, Scott Sumner, Phil Goetz, Robert Rush, Donald
Prell, Olivia Gonzalez, Bradley Andrews, Keith Adams, Agustin Lebron,
Karl Wiberg, Thomas Malone, Will Gordon, Philip Maymin, Henrik Jons-
son, Mark Bahner, Adam Lapidus, Tom McKendree, Evelyn Mitchell, Jacek
Stopa, Scott Leibrand, Paul Ralley, Anders Sandberg, Eli Lehrer, Michael
Klein, Lumifer, Joy Buchanan, Miles Brundage, Harry Beck, Michael Price,
Tim Freeman, Vladimir M., David Wolf, Randall Pickett, Zack Davis,
Tom Bell, Harry Hawk, Adam Kolber, Dean Menk, Randall Mayes, Karen
Maloney, Brian Tomasik, Ramez Naam, John Clark, Robert de Neufville,
Richard Bruns, Keith Mansfield, Gordon Worley, Giedrius, Peter Garret-
son, Christopher Burger, Nithya Sambasivam, Zachary Weinersmith, Luke
Somers, Barbara Belle, Jake Selinger, Geoffrey Miller, Arthur Breitman,
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acknowledgments
Martin Wooster, Daniel Boese, Oge Nnadi, Joseph Mela, Diego Caleiro,
Daniel Lemire, Emily Perry, Jess Riedel, Jon Perry, Eli Tyre, Daniel Eras-
mus, Emmanuel Saadia, Erik Brynjolfsson, Anamaria Berea, Niko Zinovii,
Matthew Farrell, Diana Fleischman, and Douglas Barrett.
I have received no financial assistance for this book and its related
research, other than the freedom that academic tenure has provided me. I
deeply thank my GMU colleagues for granting me that unusual privilege.
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contents
Introduction 1
i. basics
1. Start 5
Overview; Summary
2. Modes 13
Precedents; Prior Eras; Our Era; Era Values; Dreamtime; Limits
3. Framing 31
Motivation; Forecasting; Scenarios; Consensus; Scope; Biases
4. Assumptions 45
Brains; Emulations; Complexity; Artificial Intelligence
5. Implementation 55
Mindreading; Hardware; Security; Parallelism
ii. physics
6. Scales 69
Speeds; Bodies; Lilliput; Meetings; Entropy; Miserly Minds
7. Infrastructure 85
Climate; Cooling; Air and Water; Buildings; Manufacturing
8. Appearances 99
Virtual Reality; Comfort; Shared Spaces; Merging Real and Virtual
9. Information 109
Views; Records; Fakery; Simulations
10. Existence 119
Copying; Rights; Many Ems; Surveillance
11. Farewells 127
Fragility; Retirement; Ghosts; Ways to End; Defining Death;
Suicide
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