The Age of Em

Work, Love, and Life When Robots Rule the Earth

By: Robin Hanson

Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray

Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's Summary

Robots may one day rule the world, but what is a robot-ruled Earth like?

Many think the first truly smart robots will be brain emulations, or ems. Scan a human brain, then run a model with the same connections on a fast computer, and you have a robot brain, but recognizably human.

Train an em to do some job and copy it a million times; an army of workers is at your disposal. When they can be made cheaply, within perhaps a century, ems will displace humans in most jobs. In this new economic era, the world economy may double in size every few weeks.

Some say we can't know the future, especially following such a disruptive new technology, but Professor Robin Hanson sets out to prove them wrong. Applying decades of expertise in physics, computer science, and economics, he uses standard theories to paint a detailed picture of a world dominated by ems.

While human lives don't change greatly in the em era, em lives are as different from ours as our lives are from those of our farmer and forager ancestors. Ems make us question common assumptions of moral progress, because they reject many of the values we hold dear.

Read about em mind speeds, body sizes, job training and career paths, energy use and cooling infrastructure, virtual reality, aging and retirement, death and immortality, security, wealth inequality, religion, teleportation, identity, cities, politics, law, war, status, friendship, and love.

This book shows you just how strange your descendants may be, though ems are no stranger than we would appear to our ancestors. To most ems, it seems good to be an em.

©2016 Robin Hanson (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

30% of time me spent describing itself

The author spends almost as much time describing the structure of the book and structure of his research as he does talking about the ACTUAL content. I prefer books that tell me directly what they have to say, versus telling me ad nauseam HOW they are going to tell me about it. LOTS of wasted time.

An analytical book suited as a reference book

Struggled to finish it , reads more like a reference book than a straight read.

Couldn't finish it

I couldn't finish it. It felt like it was never going to get to the point. That means a lot coming from me as I'll sit through just about anything.

Just plain awful, some thing that could be said within 1 hour, unnecessarily and painfully prolonged.

within 1 hour, unnecessarily and painfully prolonged. The author assumes throwing big words around makes him sound interacting. The worst book on AI I had listened to so far.

interesting but way too thorough

Great number if assumptions draws upon authors perception of Emulation robot society and behaviours.
Interesting concept, but too intricate in detail to be credible. Got boring in the details of Em societal workings.

Beginning is engaging and worth the time.

Interesting thought experiment and I appreciated the author's careful consideration to justify the scenario he presented. I found the content slightly repetitive, or too "in-the-weeds," at times which lead to a longer duration that caused me to lose interest during the latter two-thirds of the book.

brilliant boring

Just 'cause it's boring doesn't make it's not brilliant. I'm asked to include more words in a review. Here they are.

A must-read for anyone interested in mind uploading

The book is an unusually detailed treatise on societal implications of mind uploading, as if written by an impartial sociologist.

It’s written as a research work, not as a work of science fiction. So, if you expect to be entertained, you’ll be disappointed.

But if you’re interested in futurology or mind uploading as scholarly disciplines, the book is a must-read.

Like nothing I've ever read before

Age of Em is an analysis of a potential dystopian/utopian future backed up by a truly staggering amount of evidence and research. Here's what others have said:



"One of the great risks of futurology is to fail to realize how different societies and institutions can be – the same way uncreative costume designers make their aliens look like humans with green skin. A lot of our thoughts about the future involve assumptions we’ve never really examined critically. In Age of Em, Robin Hanson dynamites those assumptions.



"Age of Em is whirlwind tour through almost every science and a pretty good way to learn about the present. If you didn’t already know that wars are distributed evenly across all possible war sizes, well, read Age of Em and you will know that and many similar things.



"Age of Em shows you every part of what our weird incomprehensible posthuman descendents will be doing in loving detail. Even what kind of swear words they’ll use."



-Scott Alexander, Psychiatrist and author of "Unsong"



"When the typical economist tells me about his latest research, my standard reaction is ‘Eh, maybe.’ Then I forget about it. When Robin Hanson tells me about his latest research, my standard reaction is ‘No way! Impossible!’ Then I think about it for years."



-Tyler Cowen Economist and author of "Create Your Own Economy"