Ian Banks's Benign Future

And Elon Musk's mission to make it happen

A few days ago, tech and space visionary Elon Musk answered live questions for an hour at Viva Technology’s Paris Convention. Of note to me, he discussed his vision for the future of work, “universal high income,” human-Ai alignment, and the future of education. He also recommended two science fiction books/series: Ian Banks’s The Culture series, which I wrote about prior here, and Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

From left to right: Ian Banks, Elon Musk, and Douglas Adams

In this post, I break down Elon Musk’s big ideas, elaborate on questions and problems they generate, and explore elements from these novels that relate to his vision.

Here are the highlights from his responses for anyone short on time:

• Future of Work: All work will be optional, and Ai will give us the power to create a world of not just Universal Basic Income, but Universal High Income

• Human-Ai alignment: We must align humans to AI using Neuralink, not the other way around

• Future of Education: Every child will have Einstein as a personalized teacher

• Ian Banks’s The Culture Series: The most benign AI future imagined, and one we should strive for

• Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: A worthwhile philosophy to understand and the book helps explain why Elon Musk wants to traverse the universe in spaceships

He also emphasized the utter importance of creating a “maximally truth-seeking” AI.

Why am I so interested in what Elon Musk has to say? Aside from the obvious, and his impact on society, I’ve also been working on a new, not-yet-named novel, the third (and perhaps final) book in my Psychedelic Love Series. I wrote the first draft of this book in November 2023, but as I watched this Q&A, I heard echos of a main character in this forthcoming novel—wealthy entrepreneur and ayahuasca advocate Bāne Kama, who appeared toward the end of my novel Mushroom Honeymoon, but is more central in this new work.

Part of Bāne’s agenda in the novel, is to create an “Honest World.” He’s obsessed with honesty the way Bryan Johson is obsessed with longevity, and, to that end, he’s created a wearable device that alerts the wearer and others when people are lying. By wearing one, all your lies will also be detected. Part of the story is his efforts to figure out how to convince the world that extreme honesty is the right course.

I’d originally conceived Bāne Kama as an amalgamation of Aubrey Marcus and Jeff Bezos, with a touch of Sam Harris too, and the character “Lincoln” from the TV show The 100.

While I didn’t have Elon Musk in mind while writing this character, he seems to be on this same mission, but instead of convincing humans to be honest, he’s trying to convince humans that we must make our AI honest.

Perhaps he thinks making humans honest is a more impossible task…