Or the Da Vinci Code. EMP attacks, rogue AI researchers, counterfactual terrorists, conflicts between FAI coders, sudden breakthroughs in molecular nanotechnology, SL5 decision theory insights, the Bayesian Conspiracy, the Cooperative Conspiracy, bioweapons, mad scientists trying to make utility monsters to hack CEV, governmental restrictions on AI research, quantum immortality (to be used as a plot device), and maybe even a glimpse of fun theory. Add in a gratuitous romantic interest to teach the readers about the importance of humanity and the thousand shards of desire.
Oh, and the main character is Juergen Schmidhuber. YES.
By the way, writing such a book would probably lead to the destruction of the world, which is probably a major reason why Eliezer hasn't done it.
Stop that, you'll make me think of a sequel to HP;MOR.
Simplified Humanism, Positive Futurism & How to Prevent the Universe From Being Turned Into Paper Clips
Michael Anissimov recently did an interview with Eliezer for h+ magazine. It covers material basic to those familiar with the Less Wrong rationality sequences but is worth reading.
The list of questions:
1. Hi Eliezer. What do you do at the Singularity Institute?
2. What are you going to talk about this time at Singularity Summit?
3. Some people consider “rationality” to be an uptight and boring intellectual quality to have, indicative of a lack of spontaneity, for instance. Does your definition of “rationality” match the common definition, or is it something else? Why should we bother to be rational?
4. In your recent work over the last few years, you’ve chosen to focus on decision theory, which seems to be a substantially different approach than much of the Artificial Intelligence mainstream, which seems to be more interested in machine learning, expert systems, neural nets, Bayes nets, and the like. Why decision theory?
5. What do you mean by Friendly AI?
6. What makes you think it would be possible to program an AI that can self-modify and would still retain its original desires? Why would we even want such an AI?
7. How does your rationality writing relate to your Artificial Intelligence work?
8. The Singularity Institute turned ten years old in June. Has the organization grown in the way you envisioned it would since its founding? Are you happy with where the Institute is today?