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Robots may one day rule the world, but what is a robot-ruled Earth like? Many think that the first truly smart robots will be brain emulations or "ems." Robin Hanson draws on decades of expertise in economics, physics, and computer science to paint a detailed picture of this next great era in human (and machine) evolution - the age of em.
Hanson's predictions detail a world both uncanny and eerily familiar.
Plenty of futurists and science fiction writers have toyed with the idea that the brains of particular humans could one day be scanned and uploaded into artificial hardware but Prof Hanson's take is different. His aim is to use standard theories from the physical, human and social sciences to make forecasts about how this technological breakthrough would really change our world
What is remarkable ... is not just the detail ... but the way he situates it within a perceptive analysis of our human past and present
What happens when a first-rate economist applies his rigor, breadth, and curiosity to the sci-fi topic of whole brain emulations? This book is what happens. There's nothing else like it, and it will blow your (current) mind.
Robin Hanson brings intelligence, imagination, and courage to some of the most profound questions humanity will be dealing with in the middle-term future. The Age of Em is a stimulating and unique book that will be valuable to anyone who wants to look past the next ten years to the next hundred and the next thousand.
A highly provocative vision of a technologically advanced future that may or may not come true — but if it does, we'll be glad Robin wrote this book now.
Robin Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University, and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. Professor Hanson has master's degrees in physics and philosophy from the University of Chicago, nine years experience in artificial intelligence research at Lockheed and N.A.S.A., a doctorate in social science from California Institute of Technology, 2800 citations, and sixty academic publications, in economics, physics, computer science, philosophy, and more. He blogs at OvercomingBias.com, and has pioneered the field of prediction markets since 1988.