Adam Becker's "More Everything Forever" delves into the exaggerated promises and dangers surrounding AI, particularly those promoted by Silicon Valley figures. The book critiques the apocalyptic fears of superintelligent AI, arguing they are science fiction rather than scientific fact. Becker acknowledges AI's current value but highlights the overhyped capabilities and the troubling ideologies, such as eugenics, intertwined with AI rhetoric. He criticizes the focus on AI dominance over addressing real-world issues like climate change. Ultimately, the book warns against the potential for increased human misery and degradation resulting from unchecked AI development.
In this book, Nick Bostrom delves into the implications of creating superintelligence, which could surpass human intelligence in all domains. He discusses the potential dangers, such as the loss of human control over such powerful entities, and presents various strategies to ensure that superintelligences align with human values. The book examines the 'AI control problem' and the need to endow future machine intelligence with positive values to prevent existential risks[3][5][4].
Astrophysicist and science journalist Adam Becker has his eye on the dreams of Silicon Valley’s billionaire elite—and he’s unimpressed. He says Silicon Valley’s “heartless, baseless, and foolish obsessions”—with escaping death, building AI tyrants, and creating limitless growth—pervert public discourse and distract us from real social problems.
He argues that tech billionaires have decided that they should determine our futures for us, and that the only good future for humanity is one powered by technology: trillions of humans living in space, functionally immortal, served by superintelligent AIs.
In More Everything Forever, Becker investigates what he calls wildly implausible and often profoundly immoral visions of tomorrow—and shows why, in reality, there is no good evidence that they will, or should, come to pass. Nevertheless, these obsessions fuel fears that overwhelm reason—for example, that a rogue AI will exterminate humanity—at the expense of essential work on solving crucial problems like climate change. What’s more, these futuristic visions cloak a hunger for power under dreams of space colonies and digital immortality. The giants of Silicon Valley claim that their ideas are based on science, but Becker says the reality is darker: they come from a jumbled mix of shallow futurism and racist pseudoscience.
Adam Becker says that powerful and sinister ideas are alive in Silicon Valley. Now he comes to the heart of the global tech world to challenge us to see how these visions of the future are foolish and dangerous.
This program contains EXPLICIT language.
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Commonwealth Club of California Podcast 
