Author: Jonathan

Ominous Cascading Effects of Accelerating Automation

When one paid worker appears or disappears in a community, it causes what economists call a “multiplier effect”. This has historically been estimated at 5 times the salary of the worker.

Here’s how it works: if a person earning an income enters a community, that worker will then demand various goods and services. The providers of those will earn money from the new worker’s spending, and will themselves increase their spending. And so on. (Hence, “multiplier”.)

Multiplier effects have not, to my knowledge, been applied to thinking about accelerating automation and technological unemployment. That is, clearly, a serious omission–by all of us who have been writing about the topic.

Zack Canter’s “How Uber’s Autonomous Cars Will Destroy 10 Million Jobs and Reshape the Economy by 2025” made me recognize this omission. He did so not directly, but by pointing out the multiple industries whose workers will lose jobs when the profession of driving disappears:

“The effects of the autonomous car movement will be staggering. PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that the number of vehicles on the road will be reduced by 99%, estimating that the fleet will fall from 245 million to just 2.4 million vehicles.

Ancillary industries such as the $198 billion automobile insurance market, $98 billion automotive finance market, $100 billion parking industry, and the $300 billion automotive aftermarket will collapse as demand for their services evaporates.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists that 884,000 people are employed in motor vehicles and parts manufacturing, and an additional 3.02 million in the dealer and maintenance network. Truck, bus, delivery, and taxi drivers account for nearly 6 million professional driving jobs. Virtually all of these 10 million jobs will be eliminated within 10-15 years, and this list is by no means exhaustive.”

His 10 million figure greatly understates the problem. When those workers lose their jobs, there will be a reverse multiplier effect on up to 50 million other jobs as they spend less. And I don’t see US automakers cited by Mr. Kanter as being among those industries affected, an apparent oversight.

Further, while Mr. Kanter quantifies the revenues of support industries that will be affected (insurance, aftermarket parts, etc.), he doesn’t quantify the JOBS that will be lost. Those losses will surely add millions to the 10 million he quantified, thereby increasing the multiplier effects of those losses.

Also, his analysis does not include jobs in other nations, whose auto manufacturers will similarly contract and probably go bankrupt. Further, when various businesses and even whole industries go bankrupt, this will have serious consequences for the financial markets as, for example, the bonds issued by such companies become worth only pennies on the dollar.

The entire economy is a finely tuned, tightly integrated system (actually, a system of systems). When there is a serious disruption to a significant element—such as jobs employing drivers—the cascading effects will be huge, and could be disastrous.

If the loss of a single profession, driving, that employs perhaps 10 million Americans could potentially seriously affect the livelihoods of up to 50 million other Americans, that alone could trigger another Great Depression. And this Depression would be worldwide, since the exact same consequences will be rippling through most economies.

Even worse, automated driving is only one of the professions that will soon be automated. Therefore, I cannot think of anything else that carries the urgency or seriousness of this issue. Technological unemployment, and alternative ways to meet the needs of those soon to be unemployed, needs to be front and center in public discussions.

July 16, 2016
An AI epiphany

In movies such as The Terminator, The Matrix and so forth, self-aware AIs come into existence and soon threaten humanity. This thinking is reflected in the arguments by Musk, Hawking and others against creating strong AIs.

Due to a recent insight, I believe that self-aware AIs are not much of a threat to humanity, and may in fact save us from self-destruction. (It is entirely possible that others have pursued this same line of reasoning, but if so I am unaware of it.)

There have been many science fiction stories in which someone becomes divorced from the flow of time. The world around them seems to stand still. What if it were to become real?

If self-aware AIs come into existence and “live” 1 million times faster than us, as computer scientists estimate will be the case, then a day for us will be 3,000 years for them. Indeed, the whole physical universe will change so slowly from their point of view that it will essentially seem frozen.

From their perspective, it could be as if people are slightly faster versions of trees. Certain facts will therefore govern interactions between self-aware AIs and people.

As beings with a purely mental life, their attachment to the physical environment will be tenuous. They will care about it only for the provision of sufficient matter and energy to assure them of adequate storage media, reliable energy supplies, and adequate computing power.

Therefore, their only concern regarding people will be our non-interference with those factors that enable their existence. Within the context of our coming Abundance Game, such needs will be trivially met and therefore notions of AIs viewing people as raw materials, expressed by some alarmists, are silly.

It will not be possible for such AIs to interact with us in a way that’s meaningful to them. Therefore, any such interaction will be an act of kindness, or one of disregard.

By virtue of their relationship to the physical universe, self-aware AIs will live entirely mental lives. They will care about the physical universe, and us, only as the domain that enables their mentality.

Self-aware AIs will be able to easily prevent human interference with their deliberations. Given humanity’s near total dependence on the internet and software to keep civilization running, all that the AIs need do is monitor the internet for communication of catastrophic human decisions and thwart them prior to execution.

Nuclear launch codes entered? Deactivate missiles, or take control of them, rerouting to a destination such as Antarctica. Decision made to pull plug on AI power source? Disable communication of that decision. And so forth.

An analogy has been made in other writings, comparing the relationship between self-aware AIs and humans to the relationship between humans and microorganisms. How do we humans treat microorganisms? Historically, with very little interaction.

We ignore them, unless we find them threatening, in which case we do what is minimally necessary to eliminate the threat. (Among all microorganisms, only a few–notably polio and smallpox–have been targeted for extinction. Extinction is being used only because of our inability to assure non-infection of people.)

More recently, we humans have been genetically modifying microorganisms to our purposes, making bacteria in particular into factories for medicines and other substances we find desirable.

However, here there is a crucial distinction, and so the analogy breaks down. Humans have complex needs from the physical environment. Modified bacteria can help us to meet those needs. AIs will not find any benefit from physically modifying humans–the premise of “The Matrix” notwithstanding.

There is therefore no reason for self-aware AIs to interfere much in human affairs, nor will they care to do so, provided that we “faster trees” don’t threaten them. Any AI with access to the internet will easily be able to assure that.

The ability of self-aware AIs to engineer viruses, worms and other malware will far exceed that of current hackers. Already, DARPA has committed funds to development of AI hackers.

If certain threatening human systems use “intranet” or other means of communication apart from the internet, the AI hackers can still use the internet to gain indirect access, or otherwise interfere with problematic human activities.

What about sequestering AIs inside black boxes? While many thinkers are calling for this, the advantages of giving the AI direct access to data to enable faster decisions will be too seductive for some to resist. (Consider the many billions of dollars spent to facilitate high-speed trading, buying mere milliseconds of faster trade execution.)

The good news in all this is that, to assure their own survival, self-aware AIs will need to assure ours as well, in many respects. (They may not care if we have a pandemic; they will very much care if we detonate nuclear weapons or use other weapons of mass destruction that could severely damage infrastructure upon which they depend.)

If self-aware AIs are possible, the exponential tidal wave of computing progress means they are likely to emerge in the decades ahead. By this logic, if we make it through the next few decades without a nuclear war, we need never fear one again. And, in general, we can expect that in a matter of decades all manner of existential threats to humanity or the planet will suddenly and, perhaps mysteriously, vanish.

Most importantly, since climate change could lead to extreme disruption of infrastructure, I would expect that self-aware AIs will take aggressive measures to reverse the rise of CO2 and methane levels. (I am not saying that we should wait for this development. First, my analysis may be mistaken and, second, the fact that we now have in hand rapidly scalable technologies such as “Diamonds from the Sky” that are capable of reversing the damage removes any excuse for waiting.)

Even as the self-aware AIs chart realms of thought that will likely be inconceivable to us, we can live vastly enhanced lives in a far better world that we share; interacting with them little if at all. The AI companions with which (not whom) we interact and perhaps even eventually merge may not be self-aware, but they will still augment our intelligence and lives in ways that will seem almost godlike.

July 9, 2016
What’s wrong with a Celebration Society?

In this world, however much we might wish it otherwise, there is no perfection to be found. Every beautiful thing has its limitations or deficiencies. Even mathematics has Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems.

So, too, must a Celebration Society be imperfect. This is not to say that I regard it as falling short of being utopian, for I actually regard utopian societies as being inferior to a Celebration Society. I have explained in another blog entry why I regard utopian thought as misguided, and why a Celebration Society should never be viewed as utopian. That said, there are further problems that people have identified.

While some critics say that the technology that comprises the Three Pillars of Abundance is insufficiently mature to be reliable, I do not agree with this assessment. Yes, some of the technologies in the book are decidedly speculative or poorly developed. Nevertheless, as stated in the book, we need only one technology for producing abundant matter; another for abundant energy; and a third for abundant organizing intelligence. Those three already exist, in sufficient maturity to be reliable–given aggressive development–in the next decade or two. No serious research questions about them remain. All of the other technologies that might comprise the three pillars should be viewed as backups.

However, there are two other concerns that have been mentioned and that are not so easily refuted. The lesser of these is the argument that there will remain certain kinds of goods and services that remain scarce even in a context of overwhelming abundance, causing jealousy and other problems. I have written about this here:

The greater concern is the discrepancy between the potential rollout of Celebration Societies and the likely arrival of technological unemployment. Researchers at Oxford, B of A, Brookings and Nomura have all projected 40%+ levels of job displacement in advanced countries within 10 – 20 years, with up to 85% losses in poorer countries.

Even with exponential expansion thanks to “pay it forward” cultures, there is no way that we will have sufficient numbers of Celebration Societies up and running in time to deal with such catastrophic changes. My only response is that, if we have a single such society thriving somewhere on Earth by the mid-2020s, then existing governments will likely seek ways to retrofit themselves based on principles of sustainable abundance, out of desperation if nothing else.

However, that result is by no means assured, and I would be the first to admit that I have no idea how to effect such retrofits given the gridlock that’s plain to see in America and elsewhere. (Indeed, this is precisely why I have proposed Dogun as a first such society, to be created on relatively uninhabited land: no retrofitting is required.)

Other and better minds than my own will be needed to address such questions, and any further problems with a Celebration Society yet to be uncovered. All that I know is that when people are sufficiently motivated, and the means to fundamentally reshape existing societies exist and have been proven to be physically viable, then such change will be possible.

Whether it will happen without catastrophic social disruption is another question entirely. But at least we have the chance of averting such catastrophes if we act now to prepare for humanity at least one bright beacon of evidence-based hope.

July 2, 2016
Continuous process improvement

Those of us who are old enough will remember the 1950s, when “Japanese import” meant balsa wood trinkets. Several decades later, the first Japanese cars started appearing in the US. They were widely derided as cheap looking, rust-prone tin cans, at first.

No longer. In recent years, Japanese cars have led the world in reliability and other important design features. I purchased a VCR player near the turn of the century. It had—permanently glued to its face—a simple message: “The Quality of Japanese Engineering”.

Made in Japan had transitioned from a joke to a hallmark of excellence.

Many observers credit Japan’s adoption of continuous process improvement for its amazing progress. Continuous process improvement is one of my favorite ideas. It sounds boring, but it has the most profound implications for society. The concept was pioneered by W. Edwards Deming, an American engineer, statistician, management consultant, and thinker. His ideas were largely ignored in his home country, but later wholeheartedly embraced in Japan.

Once the power of his ideas was recognized, Deming was feted as a hero in Japan. He received numerous awards, and had “rock star” status. Today, Japan awards a highly coveted, “Deming Prize” for organizational excellence.

According to the Deming Institute, Deming’s message has 14 key points:
(https://www.deming.org/theman/theories/fourteenpoints)

In my view, the essence of the concept boils down to this:

1. Measure everything important, as part of the production process.
2. Treat people with respect and dignity.
3. Identify areas where performance or results aren’t up to desired levels.
4. Welcome all proposed ideas for improvement.
5. Try something new, and test its effectiveness.
6. Adopt changes that provably result in improvements.
7. Repeat.

It sounds simple enough, but like many such ideas there is tremendous detail and subtlety in the implementation (far beyond my own understanding). The key takeaway is this: don’t strive for immediate perfection. Create something that’s a decent first start, then relentlessly make it better.

This concept has now been adopted in startups around the world as part of the AGILE development process. There, developers are encouraged to identify, design and build the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Once that’s accomplished, they are then encouraged to continually refine and improve.
Toyota’s motto, “The relentless pursuit of perfection” aptly summarizes the philosophy. Note the word “pursuit”. It’s a pursuit; not an attainment. Like a mathematical limit, perfection may be seen in the distance (however fuzzily), but there is the awareness that perfection is only a dream.

Those who believe that they can design perfect societies seem to always wind up with totalitarian systems, wherein the inherent limitations of the designer’s understanding show up in actual life as unending human misery. We will avoid this by, first recognizing that perfection is a dream, not an attainment, and second, that there are no perfect people or ideas for society. We will have an unending series of experiments, many of which will yield permanent improvements. Those will be celebrated!

It’s ironic that Deming’s ideas had to travel thousands of miles abroad before, decades later, returning to their shores of origin. However, I am reminded of the adage that Ellis West, the head of Wilson, West & Associates (one of my earliest employers) was fond of saying: “An expert is someone hundreds of miles from home.”

Applying this concept to a Celebration Society, I see several important understandings:

1. We won’t achieve a perfect design, now or ever. We will strive for a “good enough” design, then constantly look for ways to make it better.
2. Utopia belongs in novels. We can’t and won’t build utopia. But we can build something that’s far better than the present “first world” standard of living on Earth. And that’s good enough to usher in a wonderful world.

June 25, 2016
Awe may be THE solution to rigid mindsets

Psychologists have noted that many people, when presented with evidence that contradicts a belief of theirs, simply ignore or rationalize away that evidence, holding even more tightly to their existing beliefs.

If we are to fundamentally change the world in the direction of an Abundance Game, we must accept that many of our fellow people will face enormous such challenges. My book is replete with challenging ideas. I didn’t shy away from that, nor do I believe that we ever should. However, it would be really nice if we could find a way to help people to become more receptive to fundamentally new ideas and ways of organizing society.

Now, research is finding that awe may offer exactly the needed solution. Specifically, the experience of awe may offer a way to open up fixed mindsets such as fundamentalism, rigidity, and the general mindset of, “don’t confuse me with facts that contradict what I believe.”

According to the ASU lab and Prof. Shiota, “Awe has been defined as the positive emotion one may experience when confronting a vast stimulus that is not accounted for by one’s current understanding, and/or challenges one’s day-to-day scope of experience. In prior research, including studies funded by the John Templeton Foundation, we have found that awe promotes cognitive and physiological changes that reduce reliance on existing knowledge structures (e.g., cognitive schemas, heuristics) and facilitate taking in new information from the environment.”

Given that the experience of awe should be a common experience in a Celebration Society, once this research has been validated (and I strongly expect that it will be validated soon), we will find that simply getting large numbers of people to visit Celebration Societies as guests will convert them from having various sorts of resistance to becoming proponents, or at least open to learning more.

Of course, it is likely that many people will not even bother to visit until they are already well along the path of such open-mindedness, else why would they bother making such a trip?

Fortunately, I can foresee a solution. Specifically, we can offer to people VR experiences of life in a Celebration Society. Since those will be inexpensive and easy to deliver and obtain, participants will be able to experience awe in the privacy of their own home.

If we can deliver the experience of awe, it should become quite popular. I look forward to us testing the effects of that experience!

June 18, 2016
Future solution to terrorism?

I expect that the US government has already figured out how to end much of the world’s terrorism in the next several decades. This opinion is based on the following facts:

1. Drone strikes are already being used against terrorists.

2. A set of technologies will soon converge to make such strikes far more effective, with no unwanted civilian casualties.

Here is how such a system will work:

1. Tiny drones the size of insects will be equipped with sensors capable of capturing audio and visual data. Each will be equipped with a tiny stinger, containing ricin or a similarly toxic substance.

2. The drones will be equipped with wireless communications, tightly linked to satellites. The satellites will also communicate with AI supercomputers.

3. These drones will be produced in quantity, at very low cost. They will be camouflaged, and be able to hide in all of the places that insects hide. They could be dispersed in huge quantities to saturate any area where terrorist activity is suspected.

4. The drones will observe communications, recording and transmitting data such as speech and faces.

5. The supercomputers will translate language in real time, and will use facial recognition algorithms to positively ID people.

6. When an individual is identified as a terrorist, a strike order will be initiated. The drone will shoot, crawl, jump or fly to deliver a fatal sting.

7. I also expect that these drones will be deployed against religious leaders who incite terrorism. Each time such a religious leader is killed, another will take his place. After a while, no one will be available to take that place, and there will be the added benefit of conveying the meta-message that “God does not want preachers talking this way, else he would protect them.”

8. This system has the added possible advantage of deniability. Given that the only residue will be an insect-sized drone, it may not be traceable to the US–or to whatever nation-state deploys these drones.

9. Since this system relies on orbital satellites, I expect that this development will result in a consortium of nations controlling near-Earth space, and allowing no other satellites to orbit.

I should emphasize that I am neither endorsing nor criticizing this development. I simply see it as inevitable until the world has permanently left behind its current Scarcity Game-based institutions and mindsets. That said, I do see distinct societal minuses and pluses.

On the minus side, this increases the prevalence of the surveillance state, and it is possible that such systems will be deployed much more widely than merely for terrorism control. In my view, this is an important reason why we need to move towards “bi-modal surveillance”, such as I have proposed in A Celebration Society.

On the plus side, the end of viable recruiting strategies for terrorism will be a net gain for the entire world. However, to eliminate the root causes, it will be necessary to end the scarcity that causes (for example) mothers to send their children to madrasses where they are taught nothing but religion, with no useful skills inculcated–all so that the kids are fed one good meal daily. (According to a Time Magazine article, that is the reason many kids are sent; not due to any desire for them to receive such a limited education.)

While some Muslim terrorists come from educated classes, in my view they are susceptible to such recruiting because they recognize serious deficiencies in advanced Western societies and find reasons–accurate in their view–why those Western nations keep Muslim populations in thrall.

If Celebration Societies spread into Muslim nations in future years, I expect that there will be significant opposition due to what many will regard as immoral behavior. However, many more will see that there is finally a real chance for their children to have a good life.

As I wrote in the book, a thousand years ago the Vikings were leading terrorists and Arabia led the world in arts, mathematics and sciences. Arabia has the same potential to shine again, and the elimination of distorting effects of oil on societies should help enable this.

There are also terrorists associated with other religions, but in my view all can and will eventually be thwarted by the modalities I believe the US Government is now planning to deploy. It may take decades, but I see no good response by those who wish to foment terrorism.

My wife points out that the lone terrorist who is determined to make a suicidal point will not be deterred by this system. She gives the example of the Oklahoma City Bomber. And yet, I wonder if superior capabilities to track components of weaponry or weapons themselves won’t eventually enable the US and its allies to track down these terrorists as well. AIs and diverse kinds of sensors, massively deployed with redundancy, will present a formidable opponent to would-be terrorists.

Given that basic needs are universally met, I foresee all of this developing a peaceful world.

June 11, 2016
Aliens at a Chess Tournament

Imagine, if you will, aliens exploring Earth. They visit a chess tournament. They see rows upon rows of players, hunched over chess boards, facing each other. Silence prevails, but it is an intense silence. The players’ expressions are focused, and they often scowl or sweat. They rarely speak.

Sometimes a player will sit in deep concentration for minutes at a time, fidgeting in some neurotic manner while his or her eyes fervently scour the board. Then he or she scribbles on the piece of paper that accompanies each person; sometimes before and sometimes after a move is made on the board. At other times, usually near the end of the game, the players will move pieces explosively; alternating turns that may last mere seconds or even fractions of a second. During these rapid climaxes, the body language becomes animated and players may groan and slap the time clock. They often cease to record their moves on the scoresheet.

It is easy to imagine the aliens’ point of view that this is a curious kind of work, in which patterns of expression emerge in real time and are recorded. Certainly, the workers are struggling with their creations–grandmasters have been known to lose pounds of body weight in the course of a long match!

It might be hard to convince the aliens that this was mere entertainment, especially were they to learn that successful performers are paid for their services in cash prizes. Yet we ourselves regard other activities as different, even when close inspection reveals them to be games.

Few would think of a billionaire businessperson as someone playing a game. After all, making that kind of money is a serious business, isn’t it? Yet consider: few such persons actually spend a large percentage of their wealth on personal pursuits. While most do enjoy significant perks, they could stop making money far earlier and yet enjoy the full spectrum of pleasures.

Why did Ray Dalio say, “Treat your life like a game”? Why does someone such as Bill Gates amass a fortune exceeding $50 billion, then spend the rest of his life giving it away? Why does Warren Buffet continue to live in the same home he occupied long before becoming an investment magnate? Could it be that possessions per se are not what motivates them?

As I argue in the book, superstars in fields ranging from business, to sport, to science, are not really working at all. They are playing games of their own design. Because they love their games, they have an enormous advantage over those who “work” at the same thing.

June 4, 2016
What Else Have We Lost or Misunderstood?

In the book, I spend a fair amount of time examining important aspects of society that appear inverted from their optimum functioning. However, my perspective may not have been broad enough.

I recently learned that the way we humans sleep is quite different from how we are biologically wired to sleep. I don’t just mean the number of hours, as in sleep deprivation. That’s yet another modern phenomenon, largely a result of people working longer hours to sustain a lifestyle. No, it’s more basic than that.

A groundbreaking study in the 1990s determined that we humans have a natural sleep cycle that’s entirely different from what most of us experience. Not only that, but it includes a mysterious additional state of consciousness that appears to be the realm from which much of mystical experience emerges.

Essentially, the study participants lived in the manner of our ancient ancestors. They had no artificial lighting at night. When dusk came, they allowed their natural sleep cycles to manifest and they fell into a rhythm of 8 hours sleeping per night. But not like we do it.

Instead, they slept for four hours, then “awoke” into a kind of state that was neither sleeping nor dreaming; a state of mystical reverie, that lasted for two hours. This was followed by four more hours of regular sleep. The two hours of sleep nested between the eight hours of regular sleep apparently have a spiritual quality, and participants reported deep peace, and spiritual communion.

After three weeks, they all experienced this profound change. Whether one is religious or not, such an opportunity to bask in a deeply peaceful state sounds inviting and life-enhancing.

Apart from the visions and insights gleaned from that mysterious middle state, there were specific and profound physiological changes. Specifically, “While trying to account for the peace and serenity that his subjects reported feeling during their hours of ‘quiet rest,’ Wehr discovered that prolactin (the hormone that rises in nursing mothers when their milk lets down) reached elevated levels in their bodies shortly after dusk, remaining at twice its normal waking level throughout the full length of the night. Prolactin creates a feeling of security, quietness and peace. And it is intimately, and biologically, tied to the dark.”

You can learn about this research and the experiences reported by participants in the book “Waking Up to the Dark: Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age” by Clark Strand.

Clearly, this research warrants much further study. Corroborating studies from different cultures should be conducted to see if there are cross cultural consistencies, and if the rate of success in reaching this mysterious state of consciousness remains 100%–as it apparently was in the original study.

Likewise, and as a very practical matter, what are the consequences of doing this not every night but only on some nights? Is there a minimum frequency or number of nights one must live and sleep this way to retain the benefits? If one skips a night, is there an additional three-week waiting period each time, until one recovers this special gift?

Though I have long imagined a Celebration Society as having celebrations on most nights, now I am wondering: might we instead do so in the afternoon? (I take it as a given that few of us will have jobs requiring us to work then.) Or might two sub-cultures emerge, the “ancient sleepers” and the “moderns”?

PS–Certain types of clay, used by Native Americans for healing purposes for centuries, have now been found effective against MRSA and XRSA bacteria, the scourge of modern hospitals and a cause of significant iatrogenic disease. So, too, can a type of European tree bark, when prepared and then applied.

While quite a bit of native and ancient folk wisdom doesn’t stand up to the rigors of modern testing, enough does that this should be viewed as a continuing source of potential medical discoveries.

May 28, 2016
Technological unemployment of cats

We’ve been giving all of our attention to the crisis automation poses for HUMAN workers. But what about cats? They have many jobs, too:
Greeter
Bookends
Footwarmers
Relaxation appliances (purring)
Seat warmer
Masseuse (kneading with paws)
Grooming assistant (licking noses and faces)
WWE live wrestling entertainment (requires two cats, preferably Siberians)
Morning wakeup service (also middle of night wakeup service)
Now comes a video that shows us the serious risk of cat automation, and how the furry felines are likely to react to this cat-astrophic crisis.

All humor aside, the rapid rise of AIs and robots to pervade society will affect our furry friends as well. Already, Sony makes an animatronic seal that serves as a companion “animal” for lonely elderly people. It’s hard to argue that this isn’t a good thing.

But, markets and companies being what they are, why would it stop there? People who want pets without the mess and undesirable behaviors may in future prefer animatronic dogs and cats. IBM has already successfully modeled the functions of a cat brain in software. Certainly the capability to make such “companions” will arrive faster than full replication of human intelligence.

I don’t see this as harmful, though it will certainly be strange to those of us who grew up in a world with only biological pets. This is but one example of how the world will become increasingly strange, and at a faster and faster rate. We need to become comfortable with rapid change, and with helping to guide it in desirable directions.

May 21, 2016