What would you write to the future?
The Future Library Project is collecting books that won’t be published in our lifetime.
Our AI future: Don’t fear the Singularity
AI futurists assume that faster thinking automatically produces greater intelligence, leading to a Singularity of transcendent machine minds. But speed is the less important half of intelligence.
Our AI future: heaven, hell, hype and hogwash
Existing AI programs are single-purpose. They aren’t the futurist dream of an artificial general intelligence that can solve any problem and rapidly improve itself.
What do trees say to each other?
The more we look, the more intelligence we find in nature. Even trees are capable of communicating, sharing resources, and responding to their environment.
Our AI future: What AI can and (probably) can’t do
AI has genuine potential both to liberate humans from toil, or to allow greed and bias to run wild.
The blind, dangerous enthusiasm of a ‘Techno-Optimist’
Billionaire Marc Andreessen’s Techno-Optimist Manifesto makes the case that technology is a pure blessing, that more is always better, and it shouldn’t be regulated or held back by anyone or anything. Here’s a skeptical counterpoint.
Longtermism: the good, the bad and the ridiculous
Some philosophers stray into religious fantasy when they argue that a far-off utopian scenario supersedes any obligations to the present.
Why AI isn’t an oracle of truth
Reading Time: 5 minutes Big Tech companies eager to find the next big thing have latched onto AI chatbots—but they’re racing ahead of what the tech can actually do.
Too many people
Wealthy, well-developed nations are nearing ZPG (zero population growth), which makes life better for everyone.
The deathbed perspective
Reading Time: 4 minutes It’s easy to forget that life is temporary. How would you live differently with that knowledge in front of you?
Solar geoengineering: Can we buy time to heal climate change?
Reading Time: 5 minutes We can cool our warming planet by blocking sunlight in the atmosphere. Is this hubris or a way of mitigating the damage we’ve already done?
Are AI art programs ripping off human artists?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Artists erupted in protest when they learned that AI art engines like Stable Diffusion were trained on their copyrighted works. This revelation has ignited a debate about the meaning of fair use.