What would happen if we upload our brains to computers?
1,496,909 views | Robin Hanson • TED2017
Meet the "ems" -- machines that emulate human brains and can think, feel and work just like the brains they're copied from. Futurist and social scientist Robin Hanson describes a possible future when ems take over the global economy, running on superfast computers and copying themselves to multitask, leaving humans with only one choice: to retire, forever. Glimpse a strange future as Hanson describes what could happen if robots ruled the earth.
Meet the "ems" -- machines that emulate human brains and can think, feel and work just like the brains they're copied from. Futurist and social scientist Robin Hanson describes a possible future when ems take over the global economy, running on superfast computers and copying themselves to multitask, leaving humans with only one choice: to retire, forever. Glimpse a strange future as Hanson describes what could happen if robots ruled the earth.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.
About the speaker
Does humanity have a future as uploaded minds? In his work, Robin Hanson asks this and other extra-large questions.
Robin Hanson | Oxford, 2016 | Book
The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life when Robots Rule the Earth
Human-level artificial intelligence in the form of brain emulations, or "ems," may be feasible within a century or so. This book applies many disciplines to analyze in detail the world that may result. It considers mind speeds, body sizes, security, management, job training, career paths, wages, identity, retirement, life cycles, reproduction, mating, conversation, wealth inequality, city sizes, growth rates, politics, governance, law and war.
Eric Drexler | Wiley, 1992 | Book
Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation
This is the book that most inspired Age of Em. Drexler assumes the existence of an ability to make some things to atomic precision, and then carefully and expertly derives a great many implications about manufacturing devices and the kinds of things they could make. The engineering and physics analyzes are quite expert, and in many ways still unsurpassed. It contains much less useful social analysis, however.
Carl Shapiro, Hal R. Varian | Harvard Business Review Press, 1998 | Book
Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy
During the dotcom boom, many said that if you thought old economic rules applied to the new economy, you "just didn’t get it." But Shapiro and Varian showed that long known principles of economics and industrial organization offer many useful insights into new internet and tech based products and services. Age of Em similarly assumes old economic principles will still apply to advanced future robots.
Ray Kurzweil | Viking, 2005 | Book
The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
This has been one of the most popular books ever to make a wider public aware of the idea that tech could induce very large social changes in the foreseeable future. The many techs mentioned here are all worth considering, though Kurzweil has tended to forecasts faster change than we've seen. He seems to say that all the cool techs you've ever heard of will achieve their promoter's highest hopes at about the same time, in a few decades.
Jorgen Randers | Chelsea, 2012 | Book
2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years
An experienced and expert social scientist synthesizes many areas of expertise to generate an integrated forecast of the world in 2052. While Randers assumes that no big tech-based disruptions disturb prior social trends, this is a useful baseline to consider, even if you think such disruptions are likely.
Nick Bostrom, Oxford, 2014 | Book
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
This recent book convinced many to be much more concerned about a quite extreme scenario: a single artificially intelligent system that almost overnight goes from being much less capable than most humans to so powerful that it in effect takes over the world. The book, however, focuses on what to do about this problem, rather than what is likely to happen if we do the least to avoid it.
Learn more
This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.