Robin Hanson: Prediction Markets, the Future of Civilization, and Polymathy — #66

Robin Hanson is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He has worked in a variety of fields, including Physics, AI, Economics, and Futurism.Follow him at https://x.com/robinhanson"When the typical economist tells me about his latest research, my standard reaction is 'Eh, maybe.' Then I forget about it. When Robin Hanson tells me about his latest research, my standard reaction is 'No way! Impossible!' Then I think about it for years." -- Prof. Bryan Caplan, GMU0:00 Introduction00:34 Welcome and Manifest conference introduction03:12 Robin Hanson: Education and Early Influences08:38 Transition from Physics+AI to Social Science and Economics22:02 Prediction Markets: Potential and Challenges28:37 Cultural Drift and Challenges to Modern Society40:49 Fertility and Demography48:37 Life as a Polymath59:27 Future of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation Question01:09:29 Audience Q&AMusic used with permission from Blade Runner Blues Livestream improvisation by State Azure.--Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. Please send any questions or suggestions to [email protected] or Steve on X @hsu_steve. Announcing this for some friends at Mechanize - a startup that builds environments for training and evaluating frontier LLMs. Its customers include the top AI labs, and it has contributed to the breakthrough in coding capabilities of frontier models. Mechanize is hiring! https://mechanize.work/b/hsu Compensation is extremely competitive. For technical roles, $300-500k. They are also seeking smart generalists. For example: Research Engineer, Alignment: Build evals that test for misaligned model behaviors  $500K salary Puzzle Maker: Design interesting and original puzzles that LLMs can’t yet solve  $300K salary Mechanize understands that my readership is highly selected. There is a VERY GOOD CHANCE you will be interviewed if you apply via the link above.