Interview on Singularity Weblog

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zISzqmtojD8#t=1036[/embed] This week I interviewed with Nikola Danaylov, the creator of Singularity Weblog.  It was great fun, and quite an honour to follow in the footsteps of his 160-plus previous guests. We talked about hope and optimism as a useful bias, about the promise and peril of AGI, about whether automation will end work and force the introduction of universal basic income ... and of course about Pandora's Brain.
Science fiction gives us metaphors to think about our biggest problems

Science fiction gives us metaphors to think about our biggest problems

Science fiction, it has been said, tells you less about what will happen in the future than it tells you about the predominant concerns of the age when it was written. The 1940s and 50s is known as the golden age of science fiction: short story magazines ruled, and John Campbell, editor of Astounding Stories, demanded better standards of writing than the genre had seen before. Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, AE van Vogt, and Robert Heinlein all got started in this period. The Cold War was building up, but the West was emerging from the destruction and austerity of...

Singularity University Summit, Seville, March 2015

Hyatt Hotels has revenues of $4bn and a market value of $8.4bn. AirBnB has revenues of $250m, 13 staff, pretty much no assets, and a market value of $14bn. It will soon be the world’s largest hotel company. Über was founded in 2009 and has a market cap of $40bn, despite – again – having pretty much no physical assets. It has taxi drivers up in arms all over the world. Magic Leap, a virtual reality company, raised $50m in February 2014 and then $550m in October. It persuaded the second set of investors to contribute by showing them a...
Science fiction is philosophy in fancy dress

Science fiction is philosophy in fancy dress

Looking back, I think I have always understood that science fiction is philosophy in fancy dress.  My favourite science fiction stories are the ones that make you think – the ones that ask, “what would it be like if…”  That is what I tried to do in my novel, Pandora's Brain. I started reading the stories of Arthur C Clark, Isaac Asimov, JG Ballard and the rest as a young boy, and that was also when I formed my first lasting ambition – to study philosophy at Oxford.  (I still don’t know where that ambition came from.  Perhaps it was something...

Pandora’s Brain is published!

Pandora's Brain is available today on Amazon sites around the world in both ebook and paperback formats. I'm celebrating by attending the Singularity University Summit in Seville.  The content of this conference has been inspiring and uplifting but also very grounded.  As you would expect, the word "exponential" has been used a great deal, but the presenters - mostly SU faculty - have focused on changes expected in the near term, and have provided solid evidence and examples to support their claims about the future they envisage. I've met some great SU people - including AI expert Neil Jacobstein, medical expert Daniel...