
The Singularity Principles
Anticipating and Managing Cataclysmically Disruptive Technologies
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $19.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
David W. Wood
-
By:
-
David Wood
About this listen
This book is dedicated to what may be the most important concept in human history, namely, the singularity—what it is, what it is not, the steps by which we may reach it, and crucially, how to make it more likely that we’ll experience a positive singularity rather than a negative singularity.
For now, here’s a simple definition. The singularity is the emergence of artificial general intelligence (AGI), and the associated transformation of the human condition. Spoiler alert: That transformation will be profound. But if we’re not paying attention, it’s likely to be profoundly bad.
Despite the importance of the concept of the singularity, the subject receives nothing like the attention it deserves. When it is discussed, it often receives scorn or ridicule. Alas, you’ll hear sniggers and see eyes rolling.
That’s because there’s a kind of shadow around the concept—an unhelpful set of distortions that make it harder for people to fully perceive the real opportunities and the real risks that the singularity brings.
These distortions grow out of a wider confusion—confusion about the complex interplay of forces that are leading society to the adoption of ever more powerful technologies, including ever more powerful AI.
This book seeks to dispel the confusion, to untangle the distortions, to highlight practical steps forward, and to attract much more serious attention to the singularity. The future of humanity is at stake.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Coming Wave
- AI, Power, and Our Future
- By: Mustafa Suleyman, Michael Bhaskar - contributor
- Narrated by: Mustafa Suleyman
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organize your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy.
-
-
Click bait
- By Buyer on 09-11-23
By: Mustafa Suleyman, and others
-
What's Our Problem?
- A Self-Help Book for Societies
- By: Tim Urban
- Narrated by: Tim Urban
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the creator of the wildly popular blog Wait but Why, a fun and fascinating deep dive into what the hell is going on in our strange, unprecedented modern times.
-
-
Good for a while but then goes hard off the rails
- By g27c on 04-20-23
By: Tim Urban
-
Quantum Supremacy
- How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything
- By: Michio Kaku
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The runaway success of the microchip may finally be reaching its end. As shrinking transistors approach the size of atoms, the phenomenal growth of computational power inevitably collapses. But this change heralds the birth of a revolutionary new type of computer, one that calculates on atoms themselves. Quantum computers promise unprecedented gains in computing power, enabling advancements that could overturn every aspect of our daily lives.
-
-
Title should have been “Quantum Global Warming”
- By Amazon Customer on 06-08-23
By: Michio Kaku
-
The End of the World Is Just the Beginning
- Mapping the Collapse of Globalization
- By: Peter Zeihan
- Narrated by: Peter Zeihan
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For generations, everything has been getting faster, better, and cheaper. Finally, we reached the point that almost anything you could ever want could be sent to your home within days - even hours - of when you decided you wanted it. America made that happen, but now America has lost interest in keeping it going.
-
-
Everyone dies except Americans
- By preetam on 06-22-22
By: Peter Zeihan
-
Artificial Intelligence
- Bliss or Peril for Future Humanity?: Understanding the Basics of AI in Our Everyday Lives
- By: Will Davis
- Narrated by: Lee Goettl
- Length: 3 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Embark on a compelling exploration into the world of AI, where future reality meets boundless possibility. Can you afford to remain in the dark? When you watch a movie suggested by Netflix's AI, talk to your favorite brand's chatbot, or follow your car's navigation to the new restaurant in town, you interact with AI. Most people are spectators rather than actors in this fast-evolving digital epoch. This is where the insightful journey author Will Davis guides you on will change your perspective.
-
-
Good basic information for people like me that do not have the knowledge
- By Mena on 02-08-25
By: Will Davis
-
The Fourth Turning Is Here
- What the Seasons of History Tell Us About How and When This Crisis Will End
- By: Neil Howe
- Narrated by: Neil Howe
- Length: 20 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twenty-five years ago, Neil Howe and the late William Strauss dazzled the world with a provocative new theory of American history. Looking back at the last 500 years, they’d uncovered a distinct pattern: modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting roughly 80 to 100 years, the length of a long human life, with each cycle composed of four eras—or “turnings”—that always arrive in the same order and each last about 25 years. The last of these eras—the fourth turning—was always the most perilous, a period of civic upheaval and national mobilization.
-
-
A little baffled
- By John Coleman on 07-18-23
By: Neil Howe
-
The Coming Wave
- AI, Power, and Our Future
- By: Mustafa Suleyman, Michael Bhaskar - contributor
- Narrated by: Mustafa Suleyman
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organize your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy.
-
-
Click bait
- By Buyer on 09-11-23
By: Mustafa Suleyman, and others
-
What's Our Problem?
- A Self-Help Book for Societies
- By: Tim Urban
- Narrated by: Tim Urban
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the creator of the wildly popular blog Wait but Why, a fun and fascinating deep dive into what the hell is going on in our strange, unprecedented modern times.
-
-
Good for a while but then goes hard off the rails
- By g27c on 04-20-23
By: Tim Urban
-
Quantum Supremacy
- How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything
- By: Michio Kaku
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The runaway success of the microchip may finally be reaching its end. As shrinking transistors approach the size of atoms, the phenomenal growth of computational power inevitably collapses. But this change heralds the birth of a revolutionary new type of computer, one that calculates on atoms themselves. Quantum computers promise unprecedented gains in computing power, enabling advancements that could overturn every aspect of our daily lives.
-
-
Title should have been “Quantum Global Warming”
- By Amazon Customer on 06-08-23
By: Michio Kaku
-
The End of the World Is Just the Beginning
- Mapping the Collapse of Globalization
- By: Peter Zeihan
- Narrated by: Peter Zeihan
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For generations, everything has been getting faster, better, and cheaper. Finally, we reached the point that almost anything you could ever want could be sent to your home within days - even hours - of when you decided you wanted it. America made that happen, but now America has lost interest in keeping it going.
-
-
Everyone dies except Americans
- By preetam on 06-22-22
By: Peter Zeihan
-
Artificial Intelligence
- Bliss or Peril for Future Humanity?: Understanding the Basics of AI in Our Everyday Lives
- By: Will Davis
- Narrated by: Lee Goettl
- Length: 3 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Embark on a compelling exploration into the world of AI, where future reality meets boundless possibility. Can you afford to remain in the dark? When you watch a movie suggested by Netflix's AI, talk to your favorite brand's chatbot, or follow your car's navigation to the new restaurant in town, you interact with AI. Most people are spectators rather than actors in this fast-evolving digital epoch. This is where the insightful journey author Will Davis guides you on will change your perspective.
-
-
Good basic information for people like me that do not have the knowledge
- By Mena on 02-08-25
By: Will Davis
-
The Fourth Turning Is Here
- What the Seasons of History Tell Us About How and When This Crisis Will End
- By: Neil Howe
- Narrated by: Neil Howe
- Length: 20 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twenty-five years ago, Neil Howe and the late William Strauss dazzled the world with a provocative new theory of American history. Looking back at the last 500 years, they’d uncovered a distinct pattern: modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting roughly 80 to 100 years, the length of a long human life, with each cycle composed of four eras—or “turnings”—that always arrive in the same order and each last about 25 years. The last of these eras—the fourth turning—was always the most perilous, a period of civic upheaval and national mobilization.
-
-
A little baffled
- By John Coleman on 07-18-23
By: Neil Howe
-
Existential Physics
- A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions
- By: Sabine Hossenfelder
- Narrated by: Gina Daniels
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Not only can we not currently explain the origin of the universe, it is questionable we will ever be able to explain it. The notion that there are universes within particles, or that particles are conscious, is ascientific, as is the hypothesis that our universe is a computer simulation. On the other hand, the idea that the universe itself is conscious is difficult to rule out entirely.
-
-
Unscientific and unengaging
- By Jase G on 03-29-23
-
The Singularity Is Near
- When Humans Transcend Biology
- By: Ray Kurzweil
- Narrated by: George Wilson
- Length: 24 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For over three decades, Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future. In his classic The Age of Spiritual Machines, he argued that computers would soon rival the full range of human intelligence at its best. Now he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: The union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our creations.
-
-
RUINED audio.
- By Fred on 06-25-21
By: Ray Kurzweil
-
Power and Prediction
- The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence
- By: Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb
- Narrated by: Tom Beyer
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In their bestselling first book, Prediction Machines, eminent economists Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb explained the simple yet game-changing economics of AI. Now, in Power and Prediction, they go deeper, examining the most basic unit of analysis: the decision. The authors explain that the two key decision-making ingredients are prediction and judgment, and we perform both together in our minds, often without realizing it.
-
-
Inspire system thinking with informative examples
- By Lucy A. Pithecus on 11-16-22
By: Ajay Agrawal, and others
-
Superintelligence
- Paths, Dangers, Strategies
- By: Nick Bostrom
- Narrated by: Napoleon Ryan
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Superintelligence asks the questions: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life. The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become extremely powerful - possibly beyond our control.
-
-
Colossus: The Forbin Project is coming
- By Gary on 09-12-14
By: Nick Bostrom
-
Life 3.0
- Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
- By: Max Tegmark
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How will artificial intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society, and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology - and there's nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who's helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.
-
-
Irritating
- By Thomas Cotter on 10-25-17
By: Max Tegmark
-
Accelerate: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations
- By: Nicole Forsgren PhD, Jez Humble, Gene Kim
- Narrated by: Nicole Forsgren
- Length: 4 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How can we apply technology to drive business value? For years we've been told that the performance of software delivery teams doesn't matter - that it can't provide a competitive advantage to our companies. Through four years of groundbreaking research to include data collected from the State of DevOps reports conducted with Puppet, Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim set out to find a way to measure software delivery performance - and what drives it - using rigorous statistical methods.
-
-
Only if you have nothing else to do
- By Gvido on 07-24-18
By: Nicole Forsgren PhD, and others
-
The Great Mental Models
- General Thinking Concepts
- By: Shane Parrish
- Narrated by: Shane Parrish
- Length: 3 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts is the first book in The Great Mental Models series designed to upgrade your thinking with the best, most useful and powerful tools so you always have the right one on hand. This volume details nine of the most versatile all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making, your productivity, and how clearly you see the world.
-
-
A dissapointing debut
- By Peter on 04-14-19
By: Shane Parrish
-
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
- The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
- By: Shoshana Zuboff
- Narrated by: Nicol Zanzarella
- Length: 24 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is neither a hand-wringing narrative of danger and decline nor a digital fairy tale. Rather, it offers a deeply reasoned and evocative examination of the contests over the next chapter of capitalism that will decide the meaning of information civilization in the 21st century. The stark issue at hand is whether we will be the masters of information and machines or its slaves.
-
-
Book Editors failed to trim the word count
- By Todd B on 07-14-19
By: Shoshana Zuboff
-
Prediction Machines
- The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence
- By: Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Artificial intelligence does the seemingly impossible - driving cars, trading stocks, and teaching children. But facing the sea change that AI will bring can be paralyzing. How should companies set strategies, governments design policies, and people plan their lives for a world so different from what we know? In Prediction Machines, three eminent economists recast the rise of AI as a drop in the cost of prediction. With this single, masterful stroke, they lift the curtain on the AI-is-magic hype and show how basic tools from economics provide clarity about the AI revolution and a basis for action by CEOs, managers, policy makers, investors, and entrepreneurs.
-
-
Not sure what I was expecting, but underwhelmed
- By William J Brown on 09-27-18
By: Ajay Agrawal, and others
-
Mental Models
- The Ultimate Guide to Improve Problem Solving, Boosting Your Productivity, Avoiding Cognitive Biases, Mastering the Art of Decision Making, and Developing the Power of Super Thinking
- By: Travis Goleman
- Narrated by: Peter Nash
- Length: 3 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here you will learn all the tricks and tips of super thinking and how you can implement several mental models in your life to achieve all those goals you have on your vision board. A mental model is nothing but a simpler version of a complex problem, and that is exactly what will help you make the right decisions in your life.
By: Travis Goleman
-
Mental Models
- Learn How to Improve Decision Making, Problem Solving, Develop Better Strategic Thinking and Reasoning Ability to Avoid Cognitive Biases
- By: Joe Silva
- Narrated by: Kyle Hansen
- Length: 3 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If you want to understand how improve decision making and find out what are the mental models, then keep reading...Do mental models affect an individual’s behavior? This audiobook shows how mental models are intertwined with decision making which is essential for business planning. Mental models are important for: Productivity, professional success, greater happiness, critical thinking, and decision-making. Focus on what really matters, and make complex decisions with speed and confidence.
-
-
boring . literally useless
- By Amazon Customer on 05-24-22
By: Joe Silva
-
Critical Thinking
- Learning About Your Grey Matter and the Capacity to Analyze
- By: Martin Graves
- Narrated by: Jessica Mathison
- Length: 1 hr and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Critical thinking is a quality that most people, unfortunately, don't possess. But you are going to be different. In this audiobook, you will find fascinating aspects of the critical thinking strategies so many intelligent thinkers use.
-
-
This can teach you a lot
- By Darrell on 11-14-19
By: Martin Graves