119 Robin Hanson Prepares Us for the Age of Em & Artificial Intelligence

Robin Hanson is a professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He is an expert on idea futures and markets, and he was involved in the creation of the Foresight Institute’s Foresight Exchange and DARPA's FutureMAP project. He invented market scoring rules used by prediction markets and has conducted research on signaling.   Hanson received a B.S. in physics from the University of California, Irvine in 1981, an M.S. in physics and an M.A. in Conceptual Foundations of Science from the University of Chicago in 1984, and a Ph.D. in social science from Caltech in 1997. Before getting his Ph.D. he researched artificial intelligence, Bayesian statistics, and hypertext publishing. In addition, he started the first internal corporate prediction market at Xanadu in 1990.   Robin’s Challenge; Pursue your interests and start new projects in your free time. Your life will be long. You’ll have lots of time to pursue a lot of odd projects.   Check out Robin’s Book; Age of Em: Work, Love and Life when Robots Rule the Earth   Connect with Robin Twitter Website [email protected]   If you liked this interview, check out episode 118 with Kevin Kelly where we discuss the inevitable technological trends shaping our future.