The Economics of the Singularity by J Storrs Hall

The Economics of the Singularity by J Storrs Hall (13 pages)

Hedgehog vs Foxes

Divide writers and thinkers into two categories: hedgehogs, who view the world through the lens of a single defining idea and foxes who draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a single idea.

Tetlock: Expert Political Judgement
– Taleb: Black Swan
– Gardner: Future Babble
● Experts with an idee fixe (hedgehogs) were worse than random chance
● Regression and extrapolation typically outperformed experts

The Printing Press Presaged the Industrial Revolution

By ca. 1700, printed material had jumped to a 5% growth mode
● The general economy followed, using similar techniques

Moore’s Law Presages the Nanotech Revolution

● By ca. 2000, information had jumped to a 100% growth mode
● The physical economy will follow, using similar techniques
● I do not think growth will exceed O(100%) before 2100: there are too many bottlenecks

Independent AIs will be corporations, competing for customers.

Will AIs compete humans out of the labor market?
● Yes
● Collectively, this is what we want
– The human race “retires”
– The robots do all the work
– Human activity consists in deciding what we want
– Upper classes have lived this way throughout history

The Man With a Country
● By 2065, a billion AIs will cost $1
● We can simply give each person a nationful of productive intellects, at trivial cost
● Similarly, an autogenous nanofactory that can make approximately anything
● The interesting part will be getting there from here

Related

A Galactic Scale Uploaded Civilization: 10**50 Simulated Human Mind Equivalents

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