The Economic Singularity is the time when most people cannot find employment, because machines can do everything that humans can do for money cheaper, faster, and better than they can. Some people say this will never happen, but most AI professionals think it will, although they disagree about when.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is already superhuman at absorbing and processing information. Robots are becoming increasingly dextrous, flexible, and safe to be around (except the military ones). AI is our most powerful technology, and you need to understand it.
This book argues that the Economic Singularity is the most important challenge facing humanity in the first half of the 21st century – and also its most exciting opportunity. Self-driving cars and smartphones you can have a conversation with may be the canaries in the coal mine, providing a wake-up call for everyone who isn’t yet paying attention. All jobs will be affected, from fast food McJobs to lawyers and journalists.
The fashionable belief that Universal Basic Income is the solution is only partly correct. We are probably going to need an entirely new economic system, and we should start planning for the Economic Singularity soon.
The outcome can be very good – a world in which machines do all the boring jobs and humans do pretty much what they please. But there are major risks, which we can only avoid by being alert to the possible futures and planning how to avoid the negative ones.
Genre: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / General10,000
Many weeks in Amazon bestsellers lists
Considering how often the term is used, artificial intelligence (AI) is very hard to define. We can say that it is intelligence demonstrated by a machine or by software. The problem arises when we try to explain what we mean by intelligence.
Like most words used to describe what the brain does, intelligence is hard to pin down, and there are many rival definitions. Most of them contain the notion of the ability to acquire information, and use it to achieve a goal. A succinct one comes from German academic Marcus Hutter, and Shane Legg, a co-founder of a company called DeepMind that we will hear about later. It states that “intelligence measures an agent’s general ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments.”i An even more pithy definition is: “goal-oriented learning behaviour”.
As well as being hard to define, intelligence is also hard to measure. There are many types of information that an intelligent being might want to acquire, and many types of goals it might want to achieve.
American psychologist Howard Gardner has distinguished nine types of intelligence: linguistic, logic-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily, interpersonal, intra-personal, existential and naturalisticii. Just listing them is sufficient for our purposes: we don't need to examine each one.
We all know that people vary in the type of intelligence they possess. Some are good at acquiring dry factual knowledge such as the birth dates of kings and queens, yet hopeless at using their knowledge to achieve some of their goals, like making new friends. Others struggle to learn things from books or lessons, but are quick to understand what other people want, and hence become very popular. When thinking about intelligence, a host of associated notions crowd in, such as reasoning, memory, understanding, learning and planning.
| Language | Status |
|---|---|
|
French
|
Already translated.
Translated by Cloe Dauplais
|
|
|
Author review: Cloe is very thorough and professional, and a great communicator. Recommended. |
|
German
|
Already translated.
Translated by Janardhan Marappa
|
|
|
Author review: Janardhan is a fast and reliable translator. Recommended. |
|
Italian
|
Translation in progress.
Translated by Christian Bellagamba
|
|
Portuguese
|
Already translated.
Translated by Elizete Maria Gomes da Silva
|
|
|
Author review: Elizete did a great job and was easy to communicate with. Recommended. |
|
Spanish
|
Already translated.
Translated by Tomas Ibarra
|
|
|
Author review: I really enjoyed working with Tomas. His translation is flawless, and he understands the publication process very well. A very smart and congenial collaborator. Highly recommended. |
