Singularity Rising: Surviving and Thriving in a Smarter, Richer, and More Dangerous World

by James D. Miller

Overview

In Ray Kurzweil’s New York Times bestseller The Singularity is Near, the futurist and entrepreneur describes the Singularity, a likely future utterly different than anything we can imagine. The Singularity is triggered by the tremendous growth of human and computing intelligence that is an almost inevitable outcome of Moore's Law. Since the book's publication, the coming of the Singularity is now eagerly anticipated by many of the leading thinkers in Silicon Valley, from PayPal mastermind Peter Thiel to Google co-founder Larry Page. The formation of the Singularity University, and the huge popularity of the Singularity website kurzweilai.com, speak to the importance of this intellectual movement.

But what about the average person? How will the Singularity affect our daily lives—our jobs, our families, and our wealth?

Singularity Rising: Surviving and Thriving in a Smarter, Richer, and More Dangerous World focuses on the implications of a future society faced with an abundance of human and artificial intelligence. James D. Miller, an economics professor and popular speaker on the Singularity, reveals how natural selection has been increasing human intelligence over the past few thousand years and speculates on how intelligence enhancements will shape civilization over the next forty years.

Miller considers several possible scenarios in this coming singularity:
• A merger of man and machine making society fantastically wealthy and nearly immortal
• Competition with billions of cheap AIs drive human wages to almost nothing while making investors rich
• Businesses rethink investment decisions to take into account an expected future period of intense creative destruction
• Inequality drops worldwide as technologies mitigate the cognitive cost of living in impoverished environments
• Drugs designed to fight Alzheimer's disease and keep soldiers alert on battlefields have the fortunate side effect of increasing all of their users’ IQs, which, in turn, adds a percentage points to worldwide economic growth

Singularity Rising offers predictions about the economic implications for a future of widely expanding intelligence and practical career and investment advice on flourishing on the way to the Singularity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936661657
Publisher:	BenBella Books, Inc.
Publication date:	10/16/2012
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

James D. Miller is an associate professor of economics at Smith College and was a speaker at the 2008 Singularity Summit. He has a JD from Stanford where he was on Law Review and a PhD from the University of Chicago where his dissertation advisor was a Nobel Prize winner. He is a columnist for BetterInvesting Magazine and regularly wrote for CNBC.com during the tech bubble. The Singularity Institute called Miller’s work “important” and relevant to its core mission.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Part 1 Rise of the Robots

Chapter 1 Exponentially Improving Hardware 3

Chapter 2 Where Might the Software Come From? 7

Chapter 3 Unfriendly Al Terrifies Me 21

Chapter 4 A Friendly Explosion 35

Chapter 5 Military Death Race 47

Chapter 6 Businesses' Al Race 55

Part 2 We Become Smarter, Even Without Al

Chapter 7 What IQ Tells You 63

Chapter 8 Evolution and Past Intelligence Enhancements 75

Chapter 9 Increasing IQ Through Genetic Manipulation 83

Chapter 10 Cognitive-Enhancing Drugs 101

Chapter 11 Brain Training 113

Chapter 12 International Competition in Human-Intelligence Enhancements 119

Part 3 Economic Implications

Chapter 13 Making Us Obsolete? 131

Chapter 14 How Cognitive-Enhancing Drugs Might Impact the Economy 155

Chapter 15 Inequality Falling 165

Chapter 16 Preparing for the Singularity 175

Chapter 17 What Might Derail the Singularity? 197

Chapter 18 Singularity Watch 209

Acknowledgments 223

Notes 225

References 235

Index 245

Editorial Reviews

“Many books are fun and interesting, but Singularity Rising is fun and interesting while focusing on some of the most important pieces of humanity's most important problem.”
—Luke Muehlhauser, Executive Director, Singularity Institute

“The arrow of progress may kick upwards into a booming curve or it may terminate in an existential zero. What it will not do is carry on as before. With great insight and forethought, Miller’s Singularity Rising prepares us for the forking paths ahead by teasing out the consequences of an artificial intelligence explosion and by staking red flags on the important technological problems of the next three decades.”
—Peter Thiel, self-made technology billionaire and co-founder of the Singularity Summit

“We've waited too long for a thorough, articulate, general-audience account of modern thinking on exponentially increasing machine intelligence and its risks and rewards for humanity. Miller provides exactly that, and I hope and expect that his book will greatly raise the quality of debate and research in this critical area.”
—Aubrey de Grey, leading biomedical gerontologist and former AI researcher

“How can we be intelligent about superintelligence? Its finessed agility steers its course through the terrain of analytics and into the salty basin of awareness. It is wise. It is a nonpartisan player. It flirts freely with friendliness. Miller understands this, even if his approach is at times jolting. Singularity Rising, by default, turns the reader to question the true value of intelligence and hopefully realize that it must be found in the bosom of its wisdom.”
—Natasha Vita-More, Chairman, Humanity+; editor, The Transhumanist Reader

“There are things in this book that could mess with your head.”
—Vernor Vinge, computer scientist, Hugo Award-winning author of A Fire Upon the Deep, essayist of "The Coming Technological Singularity"

From the Publisher