I stayed up late last night reading through J. Storrs Hall, PhD's new book Beyond AI. It's a pleasant and mostly easy read. Partly this is because it is written in a clear conversational style that goes down easy, and partly because it is quite nontechnical. I found myself agreeing with almost everything in it, which is unusual for me. Generally I prefer a book to be a little stronger in its "conclusions" though. For example, the section on the dangers of the "Hard Takeoff" scenario (which I believe is available inn the kurzweilai.net excerpts) gives some good reasons to think we shouldn't be too worried about it, but doesn't really state that conclusion in a forceful way (and thus I might not even have it right). Great book, Josh! I will go back in the next few days and study chapters 8, 12, 13, and 14 in more depth. It's a nice change of pace from Pei Wang's book on NARS, which I am working at diligently but am a bit too stupid to absorb quickly.
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