Identifying whole-brain emulation (WBE) as a potentially transformative technology definitely meets my threshold for major. However, this happened well before 2015. E.g. WBE was discussed in Superintelligence (published 2014), the Hanson-Yudkowsky FOOM debate in 2008, and FHI’s WBE roadmap is from 2008 as well. So it’s not novel.
(I’m fairly sure the idea had been discussed even earlier by transhumanists, but don’t know good sources off the top of my head.)
To be clear, I still think the marginal contribution of The Age of Em was important and valuable. But I think it’s of the type “refinement of ideas that aren’t strictly speaking novel”, similar to the “Views on AI have become more diverse” examples Tobias gave above.
Hanson’s If Uploads Come First is from 1994, his economic growth given machine intelligence is from 2001, and uploads were much discussed in transhumanist circles in the 1990s and 2000s, with substantial earlier discussion (e.g. by Moravec in his 1988 book Mind Children). Age of Em added more details and has a number of interesting smaller points, but the biggest ideas (Malthusian population growth by copying and economic impacts of brain emulations) are definitely present in 1994. The general idea of uploads as a technology goes back even further.
Age of Em should be understood like Superintelligence, as a polished presentation and elaboration of a set of ideas already locally known.
Thanks for this suggestion!
Identifying whole-brain emulation (WBE) as a potentially transformative technology definitely meets my threshold for major. However, this happened well before 2015. E.g. WBE was discussed in Superintelligence (published 2014), the Hanson-Yudkowsky FOOM debate in 2008, and FHI’s WBE roadmap is from 2008 as well. So it’s not novel.
(I’m fairly sure the idea had been discussed even earlier by transhumanists, but don’t know good sources off the top of my head.)
To be clear, I still think the marginal contribution of The Age of Em was important and valuable. But I think it’s of the type “refinement of ideas that aren’t strictly speaking novel”, similar to the “Views on AI have become more diverse” examples Tobias gave above.
Hanson’s If Uploads Come First is from 1994, his economic growth given machine intelligence is from 2001, and uploads were much discussed in transhumanist circles in the 1990s and 2000s, with substantial earlier discussion (e.g. by Moravec in his 1988 book Mind Children). Age of Em added more details and has a number of interesting smaller points, but the biggest ideas (Malthusian population growth by copying and economic impacts of brain emulations) are definitely present in 1994. The general idea of uploads as a technology goes back even further.
Age of Em should be understood like Superintelligence, as a polished presentation and elaboration of a set of ideas already locally known.