The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life when Robots Rule the Earth

468 Pages·2016·2.88 MB·English

by  Robin Hanson

THE AGE OF EM
THE AGE OF
EM
WORK, LOVE, AND LIFE WHEN ROBOTS RULE THE EARTH
ROBIN HANSON
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom
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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 simple
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.
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 writing
this book, and I hope my desert days end now, as readers like you join me in
discussing The Age of Em.
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, Daniel 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 Jonsson, 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 Garretson,
Christopher Burger, Nithya Sambasivam, Zachary Weinersmith, Luke Somers,
Barbara Belle, Jake Selinger, Geoffrey Miller, Arthur Breitman, Martin Wooster,
Daniel Boese, Oge Nnadi, Joseph Mela, Diego Caleiro, Daniel Lemire, Emily
Perry, Jess Riedel, Jon Perry, Eli Tyre, Daniel Erasmus, 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.
CONTENTS
Introduction
I. BASICS
1. Start
Overview; Summary
2. Modes
Precedents; Prior Eras; Our Era; Era Values; Dreamtime; Limits
3. Framing
Motivation; Forecasting; Scenarios; Consensus; Scope; Biases
4. Assumptions
Brains; Emulations; Complexity; Artificial Intelligence
5. Implementation
Mindreading; Hardware; Security; Parallelism
II. PHYSICS
6. Scales
Speeds; Bodies; Lilliput; Meetings; Entropy; Miserly Minds
7. Infrastructure
Climate; Cooling; Air and Water; Buildings; Manufacturing
8. Appearances
Virtual Reality; Comfort; Shared Spaces; Merging Real and Virtual
9. Information
Views; Records; Fakery; Simulations
10. Existence
Copying; Rights; Many Ems; Surveillance
11. Farewells
Fragility; Retirement; Ghosts; Ways to End; Defining Death; Suicide
III. ECONOMICS
12. Labor
Supply and Demand; Malthusian Wages; First Ems; Selection; Enough Ems
13. Efficiency
Clan Concentration; Competition; Efficiency; Eliteness; Qualities
14. Work
Work Hours; Spurs; Spur Uses; Social Power
15. Business
Institutions; New Institutions; Combinatorial Auctions; Prediction Markets
16. Growth
Faster Growth; Growth Estimate; Growth Myths; Finance
17. Lifecycle
Careers; Peak Age; Maturity; Preparation; Training; Childhood
IV. ORGANIZATION
18. Clumping
Cities; City Structure; City Auctions; Choosing Speed; Transport
19. Groups
Clans; Managing Clans; Firms; Firm-Clan Relations; Teams; Mass Versus Niche Teams
20. Conflict
Inequality; Em Inequality; Redistribution; War; Nepotism; Fake Experts
21. Politics
Status; Governance; Clan Governance; Democracy; Coalitions; Factions
22. Rules
Law; Efficient Law; Innovation; Software; Lone Developers
V. SOCIOLOGY
23. Mating
Sexuality; Open-Source Lovers; Pair Bonds; Gender; Gender Imbalance
24. Signals
Showing Off; Personal Signals; Group Signals; Charity; Identity; Copy Identity
25. Collaboration
Ritual; Religion; Swearing; Conversation; On Call Advice; Synchronization
26. Society