091: The Age of Em by Robin Hanson

This is Robin Hanson's second appearance on the Economic Rockstar podcast. I previously spoke to Robin about his work in episode 073. If you find this interview interesting, check out the other episode. You'll love it. This is the Book Review from Amazon: "Robots may one day rule the world, but what is a robot-ruled Earth like? Many think the first truly smart robots will be brain emulations or "ems." Scan a human brain, then run a model with the same connections on a fast computer, and you have a robot brain, but recognizably human. Train an em to do some job and copy it a million times: an army of workers is at your disposal. When they can be made cheaply, within perhaps a century, ems will displace humans in most jobs. In this new economic era, the world economy may double in size every few weeks.