a framework for thinking about the future

A map of research areas I enjoy reading and writing about (Updated June 2023):

Subject of study: technological entities

• Thinking about AIs in society as agents (risk / threat)

  • AI Safety (governance and alignment) research

• Thinking about AIs in society as moral recipients (ethics / moral treatment / robot rights)

  • Devising tests for AI (intelligence, consciousness, mimicry)

    • Study of consciousness in humans [Related: Status conscious]

  • “Moral revolution” (a need for empathy for non-humans, including robots and animals)

Subject of study: humans

• Thinking about human enhancement and augmentation (unlocking human potential), through:

  • Wearables (higher friction in improving communication & information exchange)

  • Brain-computer interfaces (lower friction in improving communication & information exchange) [Related: Posthumanity and the future of BCI startups]

  • Longevity (increases in quality and quantity of hardware) [Related: on identity]

  • Brain uploads (enables longevity of software)

Why it’s worth studying the above

• Risk: legitimate concern around the risks posed by the use of tech as a tool (humans misusing) and as an entity (malevolent AGIs)

• Value capture: understanding meta-trends across disciplines and decades can predict shifts across the value-chain and the creation of new ones

• Self-understanding of how our species is being transformed:

  • Cognitive implications of tech development [Related: Tech determinism, A Letter to Non-Millenials]

  • More complex neural representations

The theatre in which this will transpire:

• Shift from physical to digital and phygital space (enabled by web3 and VR/AR)

• Simulated worlds [Simulation argument]

Impact on economic and sociological systems:

• Technological unemployment, the nature and benefits of work, and UBI’s potential

• Factions that could emerge as a result of non-human forms of consciousness

  • Posthumanists, who believe in the acceleration of technology, preservation of consciousness (substrate-agnostic), and technology as an end [Related: A response to effective accelerationism]

    • Interested in the pursuit of “cool futurism” (e.g., space colonisation)

  • Transhumanists, who believe in using technology to further human flourishing

    • Interested in the pursuit of cozy futurism (e.g., urban reform, renewable energy + climate tech, sustainability); and view tech as a means to a human-focused end