073: Robin Hanson on The Age of Em and How Brain Emulations Will Double Economic Growth Every Month

Robin Hanson is associate professor of economics at George Mason University. He is also a research associate at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute and chief scientist at Consensus Point.

Professor Hanson has diverse research interests, including spatial product competition, health incentive contracts, reversible computation, the origin of life, the survival of humanity, very long-term economic growth, growth given machine intelligence, and interstellar colonization

Robin has pioneered prediction markets, also known as information markets and idea futures, since 1988.

His passion is to understand everything, and to save the world. He is addicted to “viewquakes”, loves to argue one on one, and values honesty and passion. He blogs at OvercomingBias.com which has had over eight million visits.

His book The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule the Earth will be available in May 2016, and The Elephant in the Brain, co-authored with Kevin Simler, in spring 2017.

Economists:

In this episode, Robin mentions and discusses: Thomas Malthus and Cass Sunstein

Economics:

In this episode, Robin mentions and discusses: emulation economy, economic growth, labor, competition, wages, subsistence economy, capital, land, slaves, supply and demand.

In this episode you will learn:

• about Robin Hanson’s work in economics.

• what is The Age of Em and how it could double economic growth every month rather than the current doubling of growth every 15 years.

• what are brain emulations.

• what is a singularity and if we will have one within the next 200 years.

• how the workforce of the future look.

• how humans will retire and have brain emulations do their work.

• what will a brain emulation be like.

• if humans will revert to subsistence levels of existence as predicted by Malthus.

• about the labor market of the future and whether wages will be competed away with humans and ems living on the margin.

• how Robin anticipates living in the future and how you can too.

• why space exploration and space colonization will be delayed until after the rapid and exponential economic expansion brought about by brain emulation.

• whether you can have a brain emulation of your own brain or whether the process will be reserved to a few hundred people who are best equipped to perform certain tasks.

• how the relationship between humans and robots is portrayed as a dichotomy – a heaven or hell scenario – but this will not be the case with the technology available using brain emulations.

• how you can be ‘teleported’ from one device to another without being physically affected.

• how Robin used economic theory to explain the economy of the future where brain emulations are the drivers of growth.

• why the Age of Em will last for about 2 years.

• about Robin Hanson’s request to have only his head cryogenically frozen and what he hopes to achieve.

Paper:

• Hanson, R. (1994). If Uploads Come First: The Crack of a Future Dawn 

Podcast Episodes:

• Manu Saadia

Books:

• The Age of Em by Robin Hanson
• Trekonomics by Manu Saadia
• The World According to Star Wars by Cass Sunstein

Resources:

• The Age of Em
• www.overcomingbias.com
• Future of Humanity Institute
• Consensus Point

Podcast: Play in new window | Download