The Era of Killer Robots Is Here

Writing in the 1990s, venture capitalist James Davidson and banker and media consultant William Rees-Mogg predicted that the first quarter of the 21st century would bring sweeping changes to the global economy and the very structure of human civilization. In The Sovereign Individual, they explain both their predictions and the rationale behind them.

One of their most significant predictions is that nations will fragment into millions of city-states and even individual estates with sovereign-nation status. The owners of these sovereign estates are the “sovereign individuals” from whom the book draws its title.

In this guide, we’ll discuss the authors’ predictions, particularly the rise of sovereign individuals, and we’ll take stock of how close their predictions are to being fulfilled. We’ll also provide additional context and insight from books like Predictably Irrational, The 33 Strategies of War, and The Bitcoin Standard.

The 21st century will bring changes and challenges unlike any humans have encountered before. Globalism and technological innovations are changing the structures of societies worldwide—and the changes are happening quickly. If people don’t face these challenges and help shape the future, the world could have a class of obsolete workers whose jobs have been automated and people could lose their ability to make their own decisions. In 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari highlights the biggest challenges in the modern world, and he offers advice on making sense of and navigating such transitional times.

In this summary, you'll learn how algorithms like Netflix movie recommendations are teaching you to distrust your own judgment, why religion can’t solve 21st-century challenges, and how automation will threaten the jobs of humans in every industry.

The rapid pace of technological change has impacted our lives and our world in many ways, and our headlong rush into the future may have staggering implications for our species. In The Singularity Is Near, computer scientist Ray Kurzweil predicts that a profound technological shift will change everything about how we live, how society functions, and even what it means to be human. From using genetics to reprogram the body to having the power to digitally augment our brains, the technological Singularity will lead to a future in which even death may one day be forgotten.

In this guide, we’ll explore the ongoing revolutions that together may overturn our current order—bioscience, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. We’ll examine Kurzweil’s predictions for these technologies, as well as some of their potential dangers. As the book was published in 2005, we’ll also look at how well Kurzweil’s predictions hold up and the different paths that some technologies have taken.

Writing in the 1990s, venture capitalist James Davidson and banker and media consultant William Rees-Mogg predicted that the first quarter of the 21st century would bring sweeping changes to the global economy and the very structure of human civilization. In The Sovereign Individual, they explain both their predictions and the rationale behind them.

One of their most significant predictions is that nations will fragment into millions of city-states and even individual estates with sovereign-nation status. The owners of these sovereign estates are the “sovereign individuals” from whom the book draws its title.

In this guide, we’ll discuss the authors’ predictions, particularly the rise of sovereign individuals, and we’ll take stock of how close their predictions are to being fulfilled. We’ll also provide additional context and insight from books like Predictably Irrational, The 33 Strategies of War, and The Bitcoin Standard.

A Google engineer’s claim that a chatbot he was testing had become a person shines a spotlight on the benefits and potential dangers of artificial intelligence or AI—which experts say we’re ill-prepared as a society to address.

The 21st century will bring changes and challenges unlike any humans have encountered before. Globalism and technological innovations are changing the structures of societies worldwide—and the changes are happening quickly. If people don’t face these challenges and help shape the future, the world could have a class of obsolete workers whose jobs have been automated and people could lose their ability to make their own decisions. In 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari highlights the biggest challenges in the modern world, and he offers advice on making sense of and navigating such transitional times.

In this summary, you'll learn how algorithms like Netflix movie recommendations are teaching you to distrust your own judgment, why religion can’t solve 21st-century challenges, and how automation will threaten the jobs of humans in every industry.

A Google engineer’s claim that a chatbot he was testing had become a person shines a spotlight on the benefits and potential dangers of artificial intelligence or AI—which experts say we’re ill-prepared as a society to address.

A growing number of experts are calling for regulation of advanced AI models, saying the technology poses an existential threat to humanity if left to develop unchecked. There’s no clear consensus on who should regulate AI or exactly what the process should look like. But experts propose a range of approaches in which the US government is involved fully, in part, or not at all.

The rapid pace of technological change has impacted our lives and our world in many ways, and our headlong rush into the future may have staggering implications for our species. In The Singularity Is Near, computer scientist Ray Kurzweil predicts that a profound technological shift will change everything about how we live, how society functions, and even what it means to be human. From using genetics to reprogram the body to having the power to digitally augment our brains, the technological Singularity will lead to a future in which even death may one day be forgotten.

In this guide, we’ll explore the ongoing revolutions that together may overturn our current order—bioscience, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. We’ll examine Kurzweil’s predictions for these technologies, as well as some of their potential dangers. As the book was published in 2005, we’ll also look at how well Kurzweil’s predictions hold up and the different paths that some technologies have taken.