Adam Becker: Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control Humanity's Fate

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 that 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.

SPEAKERS

Adam Becker, Astrophysicist; Author, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity

In conversation with Annalee Newitz, Author; Journalist; Co-Host, "Our Opinions Are Correct" Podcast

5 p.m. doors open & check-in
5:30–6:30 p.m program
6:30 p.m. book signing
(all times Pacific Time)

Host or Publisher The Commonwealth Club