In the background of the Pentagon's controversial–and now defunct–plan to create a futures market to predict terrorist strikes is a little-known George Mason University economist named Robin Hanson. Little known, that is, among those who view economists as little more than number crunchers whose main job it is to provide those usually dodgy estimates of what the economy's growth or unemployment rate is likely to be in some future quarter.
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But for those who have an interest in what life might be like if we lived in a Matrix-like computer simulation or how superintelligent computers could someday affect economic growth, Hanson is as hot as they come. His work on information markets–markets where "investors" make bets on the likelihood of certain future events–was critical to the development of the terrorism futures market, formally called the Policy Analysis Market, which was funded by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Although Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz described the effort as "too imaginative," it really pales by comparison to some of the other creative thoughts bouncing around Hanson's noggin–which shouldn't be surprising for a guy who says he'd "love to specialize in the economics of science fiction." Among the treats on his home page are his "14 Wild Ideas." Hanson says up to a third of them may actually be true–though, maddeningly, he doesn't specify which ones. Here are a few:
By 2100, the vast majority of "people" will be immortal computers running brain simulations. "Simulated brains are potentially immortal, just as all computer data is. And the ability to cheaply simulate brains will revolutionize labor economics; wages should fall to near the cost of making brain simulators. The population of such 'uploads' should expand very rapidly, allowing huge increases in both economic growth rates and inequality."
If medicine were taxed so much that people only bought half as much, they would be just as healthy. "In the 1970s, the Rand Health Insurance Experiment randomly assigned 5,000 adults to free or full-price healthcare over 3-5 years. Free-care folks got more eyeglasses and teeth filled, and spent about 30 percent more, but were otherwise no healthier. . . . I'm willing to extrapolate from this 30 percent change to a 50 percent cut."
There's a chance that Hanson himself lives in a "future" computer simulation. "Some uploads [people who have uploaded their brains into computers] could have robot bodies, while others could live in simulated computer worlds. Our descendants may place some of them in historical simulations, with simulated people who do not realize that they are simulated. How sure can I be now that I do not live in a future historical simulation?"
Now given Hanson's areas of interest, I thought he would be the perfect guy to comment on a prediction that's been crawling around the Web in recent days. Marshall Brain, the founder of HowStuffWorks, recently published an essay in which he predicts that advances in artificial intelligence and robotics will result in smart machines taking half the jobs in the United States by 2050. Hanson's take on the forecast?
"His predictions about future progress in robotic technology are not crazy, even if they are not assured. He ignores the software problem–even if robots have more computing power than the brain, it may take a while for software to be good enough. But it is not crazy to think the software problem might be solved within a decade or two of when we have enough hardware. His social predictions are more of a mixed bag. . . . For example, he doesn't consider that people who leave some jobs might find others. Automation has taken away most farming jobs, but that hasn't made most people unemployed; people now do other things that they do better than machines. . . . However, a closer examination does, I think, suggest that eventually machines will become mostly substitutes for, rather than complements of, human labor."
As Hanson continues to creatively cogitate, I'll let you know what he comes up with.
