Calum is a sought-after keynote speaker and best-selling writer on artificial intelligence. He focuses on the medium- and long-term impact of AI on all of us, our societies and our economies. His non-fiction books on AI are Surviving AI,about strong AI and superintelligence, and The Economic Singularity, about the prospect of widespread technological unemployment.He also wrote Pandora's Brain andPandora’s Oracle, a pair of techno-thrillers about the first superintelligence. He's a regular contributor to magazines, newspapers, and radio. He is co-founder of a think tank focused on the future of jobs, called the Economic Singularity Foundation. In the last five years, Calum has given over 120 talks in 18 countries on five continents.
I wrote
Surviving AI: The promise and peril of artificial intelligence
He thinks that in 2029 we will have AGI. And he’s thought that for a long time, he’s been saying it for years. He then thinks we’ll have an intelligence explosion and achieve uploading by 2045.
Kurzweil is important because he, more than anybody else, has made people think about these things.
"Startling in scope and bravado." -Janet Maslin, The New York Times
"Artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world." -Los Angeles Times
"Elaborate, smart and persuasive." -The Boston Globe
"A pleasure to read." -The Wall Street Journal
One of CBS News's Best Fall Books of 2005 * Among St Louis Post-Dispatch's Best Nonfiction Books of 2005 * One of Amazon.com's Best Science Books of 2005
A radical and optimistic view of the future course of human development from the bestselling author of How to Create a Mind and The Singularity is Nearer who Bill Gates calls "the best person I know at…
Bostrom has said, for a long time, that Kurzweil is half right.
If we get AGI, the outcome could be absolutely wonderful. But it could also be terrible. He warns about the possibility not so much of a superintelligence going rogue—like Skynet, or HAL in 2001—but more simply of an immensely powerful entity that would not set out to damage us but have goals that could do us harm.
The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. Other animals have stronger muscles or sharper claws, but we have cleverer brains.
If machine brains one day come to surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate of our species then would come to depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence.
Ford is a software company owner in Silicon Valley.
He noticed the dramatic improvements in what the computers he was working with could do and started thinking, ‘Won’t there come a time when they take over our jobs?’ His conclusion was, yes.
They probably will. But maybe we can keep racing with the machines rather than having to race against them.
Winner of the 2015 FT & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award A New York Times Bestseller Top Business Book of 2015 at Forbes One of NBCNews.com 12 Notable Science and Technology Books of 2015What are the jobs of the future? How many will there be? And who will have them? As technology continues to accelerate and machines begin taking care of themselves, fewer people will be necessary. Artificial intelligence is already well on its way to making good jobs" obsolete: many paralegals, journalists, office workers, and even computer programmers are poised to be replaced by robots and smart…
This book points out how massive the improvements in AI are and how we’re entering a new age of automation.
It’s no longer just muscle power, but also cognitive skills that are being automated and we need to plan for what comes next. Brynjolfsson and McAfee think that if we get the transition right, people will still work full-time. They will still be able to earn most of their income through work.
We will do different types of jobs but full employment will still be a possibility.
In recent years, computers have learned to diagnose diseases, drive cars, write clean prose and win game shows. Advances like these have created unprecedented economic bounty but in their wake median income has stagnated and employment levels have fallen. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee reveal the technological forces driving this reinvention of the economy and chart a path towards future prosperity. Businesses and individuals, they argue, must learn to race with machines. Drawing on years of research, Brynjolfsson and McAfee identify the best strategies and policies for doing so. A fundamentally optimistic book, The Second Machine Age will radically alter…
To my mind, he’s written better about AI than any other science fiction writer, because he takes it seriously. He recognizes it represents enormous change.
Permutation City is about a time in history when uploading becomes possible and very rich people can upload themselves into machines that operate quickly and in real time.
Poorer people have to upload themselves into machines that process very slowly and so they live very slow versions of life.
"Egan is determined to make sense of everything - to understand the whole world as an intelligible, rational, material (and finally manipulable) realm - even if it means abandoning comfortable and comforting illusions. This is fundamental to the whole project of SF and it's why Egan's Best - and his Rest - is worth any number of looks. -Locus
What happens when your digital self overpowers your physical self?
A life in Permutation City is unlike any life to which you're accustomed. You have Eternal Life, the power to live forever. Immortality is a real thing, just not the thing…
Artificial intelligence is our most powerful technology, and in the coming decades it will change everything in our lives. If we get it right it will make humans almost godlike. If we get it wrong... well, extinction is not the worst possible outcome. Surviving AI is a concise, easy-to-read guide to what's coming, taking you through technological unemployment (the economic singularity) and the possible creation of a superintelligence (the technological singularity).
Here's what leading thinkers in the field have to say about it: A sober and easy-to-read review of the risks and opportunities that humanity will face from AI.
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
