J. Craig Wheeler

Bob Morris is a professional book reviewer of some repute. He wrote a terrific review of "Path," the first I've seen. He also posted it as a comment on the Amazon page on the book where he gave it 5 stars!

 

Morris entitles his review A thoughtful analysis of the potentialities and perils of exponential growth and says:

 

"As I began to read this book, I was again reminded of Vernon (sic) Vinge's essay, "The Coming of Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era" (1993), in which he suggests that "the acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence. There are several means by which science may achieve this breakthrough (and this is another reason for having confidence that the event will occur)."

 

"More recently, in The Singularity Is Near (2005), Ray Kurzweil predicts that "convergent, exponential technological trends" are "leading to a transition that would be 'utterly transformative' for humanity." I was reminded of that prediction as I began to read the sequel, The Singularity Is Nearer, in which Ray Kurzweil explains how and why humanity's "Millenia-long march toward the Singularity has become a sprint. In the introduction to The Singularity Is Near, I wrote that we were then 'in the early stages of this transition.' Now we are entering its culmination. That book was about glimpsing a distant horizon — this one is about the last miles along the path to reach it."

 

"All of this material is relevant to the remarks that follow as I attempt to explain why I think so highly of J. Craig Wheeler and his wide and deep experience. He has much of value to share about various "revolutionary" technologies that have made the business world today more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than at any prior time that I can recall.

 

"In the first chapter, Wheeler observes that, 'In the past, humans have always, with some turmoil, adapted to new technologies. Technology is now racing ahead under its own momentum. Humans and human organizations tend to lag. Things are currently changing so rapidly that we may not be able to adapt. This is a qualitatively new phase in human existence.'

 

"'The biggest wave can start as a gentle swell in mid-ocean. Near shore, the wave crests and breaks. Picture a surfer on a gigantic wave. With the right timing and balance, the surfer can ride the wave and stay on top. The alternative is being tumbled within the surging surf or in the worst case pounded onto a coral reef. As we try to ride our technological wave, the tumbling may be unavoidable. We must avoid slamming into the reef.'"

 

Wow!  I'm honored to be mentioned in the same context as Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil. Morris quotes some turns of phrase from the book that I rather liked myself. I especially had to laugh out loud when I saw he quoted the last line of the book, "For every 'That hasn't happened,' there is a 'yet.'" My agent Regina Ryan and I wrestled over that short sentence and how to punctuate it for weeks. Thanks for keeping my feet to the fire, Regina!

 

 My publicist, Joanne McCall, asked whether Morris' Amazon review, given under the rating link, can be moved to the Amazon editorial section. She argues that since he's a legitimate reviewer, it would carry more weight there. Chloé Hummel of Prometheus is looking into that.

Sunday evening, November 24, 7:00 PM my time, I did a podcast with Dave Monk, The Friendly Futurist, from Perth, Australia. We had done a pre-interview chat over Zoom earlier. For the real thing, the session was hosted on Riverside, an online recording studio. His mail had said it ran on Chrome, but I thought what the heck and planned to use Firefox. When I tried to hit his link to Riverside, it didn't just recommend Chrome but demanded it; ten minutes before the program started. Fortunately, I have Chrome on my iMac and was able to scramble and get Riverside up and running, talking to my mic and camera, just in time.

 

Dave had provided me with a series of 11 questions. I wrote out answers that I could use or paraphrase, and we basically worked our way down the list. Took about a half hour. He said the link will post in February or March, 2025. I kidded him that the exponential technological world would be a lot different by then.

 

I then had dinner and watched Tracker (pre-recorded) with my wife. I took a nap at 10 PM and got up about 11 to rouse, collect my thoughts, and launch into Coast to Coast AM from midnight my time to 2 am. I walked around under the starry Texas sky for a few minutes admiring my favorite star, Betelgeuse, to clear my head, then washed my face in cool water.

 

Once again, I snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

 

I was sitting with mobile phone and computer by 11:30 waiting for the midnight start of Coast to Coast, musing what I would say when, a few minutes before start time, I realized that I had my phone set on "do not disturb after 11 PM" except for a few family phone numbers. I could not figure out how to undo that setting in the moment, but had the Zoom backup, and that seemed to work fine. I Got connected with minutes to spare, having caused mild panic at Coast to Coast and with my publicist, Joanne McCall, all of whom had been trying to call and text me.

 

The structure was a little different than I expected. Fully half the two hours was filled with commercials. While there were words introducing me a little after midnight, we did not start the interview until about 12:15 AM. In the meantime, I was hearing snippets from previous interviews. The radio audience was apparently hearing commercials and news bulletins. We then talked for about 15 minutes and at about 12:28, the interviewer, George Knapp (not the regular host George Noory), asked me to summarize the impact of exponential growth in the 1 minute we had before the break. I launched into it, but was not quite concise enough. He cut me off in mid-sentence at 12:29, and they went to break. We returned to the topic after the break. 

 

The break lasted about 15 minutes, while I listened to the same snippets of old broadcasts I'd heard before. We started again at about 12:45 and went to a little before 1:00 AM, when we took another break. This time, I understood the rhythm, and the break went smoothly. Another 15 minutes during which I walked around my study. We chatted from 1:15 to about 1:30 then took another long break, during which I read some of my backed-up email. In the final 15 minute segment, he took callers, and I addressed questions from four people, more-or-less supporting their issues and pushing back a little on the last, who was reasonable, but made some assertions about the special phase we are in and extraterrestrial life that I could not support.

 

The upshot was that effectively I did another hour-long interview, more or less following the structure of the book. We ended up talking briefly about billionaires in space. Knapp said that was as far as he got reading the book, and that he would like to have me back. I said sure.

 

The Coast to Coast web site gave a link to my University of Texas web page where my email address is posted. I got a couple of slightly wacky emails offering opinions that didn't seem to require a response, but I'll try to answer ones that do. 

  

I was in bed by 3:00 AM, up at 9:30, feeling pretty perky. Lots to do, reviewing, consolidating, planning. 

 

I was not sure about the podcast on Thursday, November 21, a couple of days after release day, but it went well, I think. This was with Guy Powell on Backstory on Marketing and AI, Powell has written books on marketing, but also one on the Shroud of Turin. I listened to his most recent podcast and was pleased to hear him and his guest talking about the broader issues of AI, albeit in a marketing context. They talked about the ethics and other nuances of the use of AI in marketing. I was thus in a position to answer his leading question, "what is your backstory?" and say some complimentary things about sensitivities some people, he and his guest, were bringing to the issue of marketing and AI. I told him I had not thought about those specific issues very much, despite, ironically, being on his podcast to market my book. Our subsequent conversation was rather wide ranging, touching on but not concentrating on marketing. I managed to end up with a plug for the book and a summary of the urgency of our situation, the need to be aware, and the importance of voting. We finished up in about 45 minutes, but he had enough interest that he wanted to keep chatting for another 15 minutes after he turned off the recording. He also worked in a deep and interesting question about whether a planet would still have inertia if the Universe expands until all the stars are infinitely far away. I could not answer it specifically but had some pertinent thoughts. He will send out a teaser in a few days and the full podcast in a couple of weeks.

 

I did another podcast on Friday at noon, Future Tech and Foresight with Marc Verbenkov, a young Canadian man working from near Vancouver. I'd listened to his previous podcast so knew his first question would be "how did you get involved?" but he told me that anyway before he started recording. I think his release will be audio only, but he Zoom-recorded the video as well, so I used my trick of talking to a small image up near my camera. Can't do that with Google's version. I learned some new terms listening to Marc's previous podcast with Mark Weinstein, author of Restoring our Sanity Online: Conscious Capitalism and Freemium, a business model that provides some services free but charges for others, a substitute for "take all your data with no recompense" sites. I also learned that Web 2.0 is synonymous in some quarters with Surveillance Capitalism. I enjoyed my chat with Marc. We were very much on the same wavelength on many topics, including perhaps the most in-depth discussion I have yet had of brain-computer interfaces and the promise and perils that may await there. It was not exactly my place as a guest to praise Marc for alerting his audience to the issues we face, but I did so. Programs like his are a critical part of the message I am trying to bring of first being aware. Marc said his podcast reaches from 1000 to 10,000 people, depending on the topic. 

 

I had a break on Saturday, then planned to do a podcast with Dave Monk from Perth at 7 PM on Sunday and the Coast to Coast AM radio program from midnight to 2 AM. Monk has scheduled only a half hour, about as long as our pre-interview, and has provided some questions, all pretty straightforward. Coast to Coast will call and talk on my mobile phone with Zoom backup. I have emergency phone numbers of producers. I submitted a release, with some grumbling about rights being passed to others, unnamed. The main challenge will be avoiding mind fog at that hour.

 

On release day, Tuesday, November 19, I did  the Artificiality podcast with Dave and Helen Edwards in the afternoon. We spent about an hour chatting. It's a conversational format, strictly audio, but they did have some questions in mind. Dave started by telling me the first question would be what inspired the book, and I told him I knew that because I had listened to part of one of his podcasts and that was the first question. Turns out they don't have a stock final question. I later realized that I missed the chance to give my final summary and comments on the availability of the book. They referred to "your book," and I don't think ever mentioned the title. Shoot. I trust they will do so when the podcast drops. They appreciated that the book covered a lot of ground and tried to tie all the pieces together. They asked about my astronomer's perspective. They were curious about how my students' perspective changed during the course and my change in perspective while writing the book. We talked quite a bit about the significance of exponential change. Two smart, thinking people. They were fun to talk to. The link is not yet released.

 

That evening, I participated in a live event, effectively my launch party. The event is called Astronomy on Tap, AoTATX. It was started a decade ago by my postdoc at the time, Jeff Silverman, so we also were celebrating the tenth anniversary of the institution. It has floated around Austin in various pubs, this one in the Celis brew pub in north Austin. My son, Rob, came along to drive (took us an hour to get there in 5 o'clock traffic, 20 minutes back in the late evening), help me hand out "Path" business cards, and monitor my performance. I also scattered cards on tables around the area.

 

All the AoT sessions I have attended before were in closed, packed rooms. This one was in their outdoor beer garden despite the encroaching chill, so the audience was spread in tables and chairs around the grounds. I had not done a venue like this before nor even given any Powerpoint presentation since before I retired five years ago. 

 

There was a stage at one end of the area, and volunteers from the astronomy department, current and past postdocs and graduate students, rigged up a laptop, sound system, projection screen, and video recorder, more sophisticated than when the event started ten years ago. I had prepared the talk over the course of the previous week and got help downloading a couple of movies. I also got help setting up a neat little movie on the exponential growth of Covid so it would show in three stages as the growth proceeded, with the scale of the vertical axis expanding to accommodate the huge growth over about a month. This showed that the doubling time was nearly constant, but that the apparent location of the "knee" of the curve shifted as the vertical scale shifted, illustrating the artificiality of the location of the "knee." It was a great illustration of Chapter 2 of the book.

 

The mics were on stands, the projection screen nearby on the stage only slightly to the right and behind the speaker, and a light arranged to shine on the speaker, so the audience could see the speaker, but the speaker was blinded and could not see the audience. The mics could be removed from the stands and handheld, but the computer was controlled by a clicker that also had a laser to point at the screen and that already required some attention, so I left the mic on the stand. The notion was that the Covid movie would play a segment then pause. I was to push the clicker to move to the next phase and another pause. Then another click would run it to the end. Worked fine in rehearsal. 

 

What I had not rehearsed was standing at the mic, blinded by the light, and craning to see and point the laser at the screen. Things seemed to go fine at first, but when I got to the Covid movie, I had a major glitch. The first segment ran fine to the pause. Then rather than just running the next two phases, the presentation jumped to the end of my slide deck. The guys monitoring the laptop just off the stage managed to restore the movie and signaled me it was not my fault. Then it happened again, at least twice more. In hindsight one of them guessed I was pressing the clicker too long, causing the skipping of the pauses and the jumping to the end of the talk. Eventually I got past that, sort of saying what I wanted to about the fixed doubling time and the artificial shifting of the location of the "knee," but it was a bit of a mess. 

 

Rob has worked in both video and sound and is especially sensitive to the latter. He has helped me with my mic for my home podcasts. In this case, in our post-talk debrief, he pointed out that, unlike the postdoc speaker who preceded me, I would turn my mouth away from the mic when I turned to look at the screen and point the laser. The trick is to lean to the left so you can face both the mic and the screen on the right. I flubbed it, so the sound was irregular. During the Q&A, I tended to hold my hand in front of my face to block the light so I could see the speaker, but that meant I was also holding my hand between me and the mic, muffling the sound again. 

 

Despite these glitches, I think the talk went basically OK. I got some good questions, and talked to a bunch of people afterward, including one young woman who took my Future of Humanity class in 2017. We handed out a dozen or so "Path" cards and sold at least two books. One young man was keen to know when I would have a book signing so he could get an autographed copy. Good question.

 

The next day, I attended a lunch for distinguished teachers, handed out a couple more cards, apparently sold two books (my academic friends were especially interested in the Kindle version), then scattered a few cards in the administration building, the student union, and the local credit union where I had business.

 

We are launched. I have four more podcasts in the next few days. Very curious to see how sales go.

With the release date for The Path to Singularity looming on November 19, November was VERY busy with podcasts and other publicity enterprises.

 

I talked to podcaster Peter Scott of AI and You at 11 AM on November 6 for about 40 minutes. The podcast should be released around the time of the book release. The mic was fine, but he caught me out on a couple of issues. He first asked about high reliability organizations, the only person to do so, so far. I think I handled that OK even though it was not fresh on my mind. He asked if I were still teaching, how would I use Generative AI? I'd given no thought to that hypothetical and bumbled my way through an answer. We talked a bit about whether homo sapiens would exist in the far (or near) future. He was interested in AI and mental telepathy, asking how to control telepathy. A huge and complex issue of course, and I said we need all the stakeholders involved. He asked whether research universities are the best vehicle for research/control of humans merging with machines? I said they should certainly be involved, and relevant courses taught, along with other stakeholders. He did not ask about the election, so I interpolated remarks on Biden policy and Trump's lack of policy. He didn't touch on issues of climate change or curing death. Toward the end, he asked about themes in the book, and I mentioned the nature and significance of exponential change as a challenge to society and how AI would be pervasive. He was impressed with the Tyson foreword. When we were done, he asked how many podcasts I had done and how many yet to do, with a hint that I could be sharper. I asked him for advice, and he suggested I be ready with more one-liner responses. I did have some in mind, but that is iffy for unexpected questions. I've now made a list of topics and responses. Another place I was a little caught out was the very end when Peter asked me "what do you want to say about the book?" as a wrap up statement. Everyone has or is going to ask something like that, and I did not have a concise answer. I'm a little more comfortable talking about the subjects of the book than in explicitly selling it (although I sold two copies to neighbors this afternoon). What I answered was that the book will be broadly available, that I was myself partial to patronizing independent bookstores. I said something about hoping to make people aware of the issues. I did not have a snappy sales pitch. My publicity team helped me compose a concise wrap up. Joanne McCall said, "It should be something you really want the audience to walk away with. Or you can use that moment to introduce something new and important that you have held back until then," and "Say the title rather than "the book." Chloe Hummel of Prometheus said, "it's important to say more than just Amazon."

 

I did a 45-minute video and podcast chat, The Saad Truth with Dr. Gad Saad, on Monday, November 11 at 1 PM. I'd made a point of listening to a podcast he had done earlier with British physicist David Deutsch. Gad veered into some personal issues and then back to the book, but it went smoothly, I think. This was the first time I did a Zoom interview intended to show on YouTube. It quickly became clear that looking at the camera at the top of the computer screen wouldn't work; the urge to look at the speaker on the split screen was too strong. But then I would occasionally look at my image on the right and then back to Gad's on the left, so my eyes would dance around. When we were done, I asked him about that, and he said people understand, and that I shouldn't worry about it. I think I should avoid the dancing and just look at the speaker.

 

On November 13, I did a pre-podcast interview with Don Murphy of The Journey Through Nature and Science Podcast at noon. We hit it off and had a great chat for 45 minutes, nearly as long as the podcast will be. He suggested he might want to have me on again to talk about astrophysics. We'll see. The real podcast is scheduled for Tuesday, December 3, at Noon, CST.

 

For this interview, I worked out a solution to the dancing eyes problem. If you click the middle, yellow, save button on the upper left of a Zoom screen, it shrinks the screen to a (large) postage stamp size, but with the image intact so you can see the person to whom you are talking. I then dragged that tiny image up to the top of my computer screen, so it was about an inch below the camera. That way I am looking very nearly at the camera while registering the facial and body language of the other person. I didn't tell Don what I was doing until the end. It turns out he is transitioning from doing pure audio recordings to videos that can be posted on YouTube, and he was grateful that I was concerned about the issue and had found a solution. He thought I was looking at him (the camera) through the whole chat. This also works when several people are on a Zoom chat. The shrunken image will show just one image, the speaker.

 

We are in talks to do a podcast KAJ Masterclass LIVE, with Khudania Ajay. This one is hosted in India, but broadcast to 80 countries, a big deal. They want a release signed. I was a little uncomfortable that they wanted my "work for hire" to be available to them to create unlimited derivatives (what, a Broadway musical?). I consulted attorney Michael Gross at the Authors Guild who gave me several good suggestions. I asked for at least consulting rights on the derivatives and also that my material not be used to train AI without my permission. That was on November 11. I have not heard back from them.

 

The week of November 11 I had to be several places at once at the same time!

 

Thursday through Sunday, I participated in the Steven Weinberg Memorial Symposium to celebrate the life and career of Steve Weinberg, Nobel Prize winner, one of the preeminent physicists of the last 50 years, author of The First Three Minutes, and many other popular and technical books. The room was packed with famous physicists. I felt like asking for autographs. Instead, I judiciously handed out copies of Rob's business card advertising "Path." On Friday, I attended the symposium, a memorial service for another less famous colleague, and a BBQ dinner with the physicists that featured a private show of western swing music with Ray Benson, lead of Asleep at the Wheel. Benson is only slightly less famous locally than Willie Nelson with whom he tours. Terrific show.

 

Things got a tad more complicated on the weekend. The Symposium continued, but there was also the Texas Book Festival started by Laura Bush when her husband was Governor of Texas. It draws hundreds of authors and thousands of people at the capitol grounds just a few blocks south of the campus. Chloé Hummel of Prometheus applied on my behalf, but we weren't picked up, surely in part because the release was not until after this year's festival. Next year! The festival is spread out over many blocks, so the logistics of attending are challenging even if that is the only thing one is trying to do. I tried to do both the symposium and the festival on Saturday, jumping back and forth and doing neither proper justice. On Sunday, I went to the physics symposium at 10 AM, then drove quickly down to the capitol to attend a presentation by British author Andrew Smith led by the CEO of Indeed, Chris Hyams. I handed both of them a "Path" card and gave a handful to nearby audience members. Before the talk began, I had a flash of insight and put several cards on a table at the rear of the room. They were all gone by the end of the session. People grabbing freebies.

 

I dashed back to the symposium for the wrap-up lunch, then back to the capitol for a presentation by locally famous historian and biographer H. W. Brands who taught Rob in school many years ago. He gave a great presentation on his latest book describing the clash between interventionist FDR and the isolationist Charles Lindberg. I gave Brands a card. My current project is a biography, and we agreed to get together at some point to talk about the art of biography writing. 

 

Physics Today staff member Toni Feder, who it turns out lives in Austin, was covering the Weinberg Symposium. I gave her a "Path" card, but she informed me that Physics Today no longer does book reviews. Shoot.

 

I was stood up for a podcast with Donna Mitchell of Pivoting to Web3 the previous Wednesday, November 13, and by Bob Bain of Dark Matter AM on Tuesday November 18. Don't know what happened with either. Some failure of communication.

 

Next up, on Release Day, I have a podcast with Dave Edwards of Artificiality at 2 PM, a live Austin on Tap presentation at 7:30 that evening at a local brewery, and three more podcasts later in the week. 

 

May book sales blossom!

 

 

My publicist, Joanne McCall who works out of Oregon, wrote, "Techround magazine is looking for expert predictions for robotech technology in 2025. They will likely speak to a number of experts, many of whom are in that industry. Your comments would likely be a different point of view. I don't think we should shy away from this. Do you care to share your thoughts? It may give us some nice coverage." Techround mostly promotes startup technology. I had to think for a bit to decide whether I might have something to say to them. I decided I could give Techround a shot if they are interested.

 

One thing I could talk about is the AI embodiment movement. Here is a quote from Chapter 1 of The Path to Singularity, "The outcome of combining these current technologies will be AI-powered robots with situational awareness that can move about freely and witness the world in diverse ways, many beyond human capability. Already the embodied AI movement is well underway at Alphabet and myriad startups. These machines will synthesize and learn from that sensor data, write their own evolving code, invent, strategize, think, make decisions, and act. Ever faster. Inhumanly fast."

 

I've had some other things going on. I thought I was too late to get an entry in the October Good Systems newsletter of the local ethical AI enterprise, but it turns out they did give a short blurb:

"Dr. J. Craig Wheeler has a new book coming out, "The Path to singularity: How Technology Will Challenge the Future of Humanity," published by Prometheus Books. The book will be released on November 19, 2024. The book is now available for pre-order from the publisher, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and our local bookstore, BookPeople."

 

While scanning that October newsletter, I realized that they also take note of people doing podcasts. As a result, yesterday I sent them links to the two podcasts I have done and a little descriptive text:

• Tech It Out (a radio show and podcast) with Marc Saltzman (Podcast Link) This was a short podcast, about 12 minutes talking about how technology threatens to advance more rapidly than we can adjust as individuals and societies. How did we get here? What is going on now? What are the prospects?
  
  
• Boundless with Richard Foster-Fletcher. (Podcast Link) This was a longer broadcast, 1.5 hours, for a British audience.

This may make it into the November newsletter. I'll send them other podcast links as I get them.

 

Yesterday I had lunch with some members of the university Academy of Distinguished Teachers. I handed out the business cards designed by my son, Rob. They show the book jacket cover on the front and on the back a QR code link to the publishers page on the book, a jacket quote, "'Wheeler thinks big thoughts about everything, with deep insight and crystal clarity. It's all on display in this wonderfully wide-ranging and terrifically accessible book about science, technology, and the future of humanity. Everybody should read it!' -- John P. Holdren, Science Advisor to President Barack Obama.,"  and a link to my website.

 

I dropped off one card at the Provost's office and was reminded of a Faculty Book Reception to which I have now applied. Date TBD. Then I dropped off a business card in the President's office. He probably will not see it, but it will kick around in his suite. I actually left the card with the policeman who guards the presidential offices. He was a little abrupt at first, but then relaxed when he realzed I was not a pro-Palestinian protestor and actually gave me a little smile. After that, I dropped off a business card and a signed copy of the book in the office of the Vice-President for Research, Dan Jaffe, who, as Chair of the Astronomy Department, gave me permission to teach the Future of Humanity Course that kick started the whole thing. Then I stopped by the astronomy department, left a business card with a couple of friends, one with the Director of McDonald Observatory, and a bunch on a table in a central area. I also talked with Emily Howard who does publicity, social media, etc., for the department and observatory. Emily reiterated that while she could not blatantly sell the book, she could talk about it on her social media feeds. She asked for a list of my podcasts, and I sent that to her. Perhaps we'll get some feedback from a sizeable audience. 

 

I also explored the Chambliss Writing Award of the American Astronomical Society, which I won with co-author David Branch of the University of Oklahoma in 2017. Turns out it is too late for the 2025 award, but I'll try to remember to enter in 2025 for the 2026 award. This award leans toward technical writing, and Path may be viewed as too "popular," but it's worth a shot.

 

I have a half-dozen podcasts scheduled in November. This publicity business is somewhat amusing, but it's been a month since I've written a word on my current book.

I've been busy with some book stuff and some astrophysics, including a wonderful October Craigfest organized by some of my ex-students to celebrate my retirement.

 

On the book side, The Path to Singularity has moved well into the production phase. Neil DeGrasse Tyson contributed his foreword justifying why, as a scientist and a concerned citizen, I'm entitled to write such a book. The jacket has been designed. I had to scare up some quotes, blurbs, for the jacket and am hugely grateful for the busy colleagues who contributed, some at the last minute. Nobel Prize winner Brian Schmidt wrote from an airport in Dubai. He called it "one hell of a book" in an email and wrote "Wheeler prepares the reader to be aware of the rapid changes that are now ongoing. A highly informative and unsettling book." Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees seemed to resonate more deeply than I anticipated. Martin said he was "hugely impressed with the book" and wrote "Advanced technology—bio, cyber, and AI—can be our salvation; it can also trigger devastation that cascades globally. This comprehensive, clear, and authoritative book is just what's needed to raise awareness of these issues." John Holdren is an old friend from my undergraduate days at MIT with a long string of laurels who served as President Obama's Science Advisor. John wrote, ""Wheeler thinks big thoughts about everything, with deep insight and crystal clarity. It's all on display in this wonderfully wide-ranging and terrifically accessible book about science, technology, and the future of humanity. Everybody should read it!" My ex-student and current director of the marvelous enterprise The Austin Forum on Science and Society, Jay Boisseau, wrote "This timely and essential book empowers readers to grasp the intricacies of our rapidly evolving world and become proactive participants in shaping our future." I met Chad Jenkins, professor of robotics at the University of Michigan at a local symposium organized by the Good Systems group for ethical AI here in Austin. Chad said, "The Path to Singularity gives entree into the mind of scientists and roboticists as we grapple with these emerging forms of intelligence. Through its coverage of the essential history, insights, and questions of AI, this book is sure to become required reading for my students."

 

The book is scheduled for release on November 19. I have a publicist at Prometheus Books, Chloé Hummel, and, at the urging of my agent Regina Ryan, I have engaged an independent publicist, Joanne McCall who works out of Oregon. Between the two of them, they have arranged seven podcasts with more likely. Going to be a busy November. I did the first two podcasts in October. Here are my reports:

 

I did my first podcast today, strictly audio, that Chloé arranged and sat in on. Tech It Out hosted by Marc Saltzman (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/astrophysicist-j-craig-wheeler-joins-us-to-chat-about/id1272785252?i=1000673579728). He does radio broadcasts to 110 stations connected to Radio America and posts to his podcast subscribers. I didn't get a number for the latter. He said he expects to release the radio and podcast this weekend, maybe as soon as Friday.  

 

We only talked for about 10 minutes and Marc greased the wheels by sending questions in advance. I composed some answers and then paraphrased them as we talked. I think it went fairly well. Here is the Q and A.

 

  Before we talk about the book, can you clarify to our audience what "singularity" refers to, exactly

Time when "computers/AI" become more capable in every aspect of human activity and then race ahead at the speed of light rather than the speed of biology.

  Congrats on your latest book, The Path to Singularity: How Technology Will Challenge the Future of Humanity. Please tell us about it at a high level

Technology threatens to advance more rapidly than we can adjust as individuals and societies. How did we get here? What is going on now? What are the prospects?

  What unique view do you as an astronomer and astrophysicist have on this topic?

I naturally put human life on Earth in the context of the reach of space and swaths of time revealed by astronomers. We live in a Universe that is 14 billion years old, on a planet that is 5 billion years old. We have developed technology that is as smart as we are and the techniques to guide our own biological evolution. What next in the vast sweep of time to come?

  As a side note, I'm a fan of Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. How cool is that for him to write the forward to the book. Are you aligned in your view – or concerns – of the future.

Very cool! I think we are roughly aligned in both our views and concerns for the future of humanity.

  What's a greater threat to humanity: AI, genetic engineering or exhausting Earth's resources?

Everything, everywhere, all at once! The next decade or two is likely to see simultaneous vast changes in the capability and effects of AI, artificial alteration of human evolution, and huge changes in our environment due to climate change.

  Will there be jobs for those willing to work in a future dominated by automation?

It is not clear to me that there will be sufficient jobs for all who care to work as AI becomes rapidly more capable. This is a complex and critical issue.

  What implications arise if we solve aging? How will society adapt to the challenges of perpetual youth?

I think insufficient attention has been paid to the attempts to extend human healthspans and lifespans. If we beat biological death, there will be vast implications for our cultures and societies. Where do we put all the babies if the old folks don't fade away?

  Where's the best place to pick up your book. Is it a paperback, hardcover, or ebook? All three?

The hardcover is available now for pre-order from Prometheus.com or anywhere else you normally purchase books. The formal release date is November 19. I hope there is a paperback. I'm not sure about the plans for an ebook. Chloe?

 

Chloé checked in real time. The answer is that the Ebook will be released along with the hardback on November 19. There are no current plans for a paperback. First gotta sell some hardbacks. I also checked on the first print run. 2500 hardbacks.

 

While Chloé was checking on that, I worked in a comment to Marc on my concerns for AI enabling mind reading and writing and the privacy and ethical issues involved in that. Marc edited that in very smoothly. I spontaneously referred to AI, genetics, climate change, and mind reading as the "the four horsemen of the technological apocalypse."

 

Marc said my sound was good. I managed to brush the mic twice, but Marc said he did not hear it and would edit out any issue.

 

My only first-time slip was that Marc asked at the very end about a website that addresses all my writing. I was not prepared for that. He asked if people can just browse for J. Craig Wheeler, and I mumbled something about Google not efficiently finding my Authors Guild site and rattled off the url. We agreed that was too awkward for his listeners, and he will edit that out. Afterward, I checked my site again with my Firefox/DuckDuckGo browser and lo and behold, up came the AG site near the top. So, I checked with Chrome, and it showed up there, too. I guess I've managed to get enough people to look for the site that it is starting to register with the browsers (as Joanne predicted).

 

I have another podcast tomorrow, 1.5 hours. A different deal, but I think I'm ready.

 

The next podcast was rather different, about an hour and a half with British podcaster Richard Foster-Fletcher of Boundless (https://www.spreaker.com/episode/ai-humanity-s-evolution-and-our-place-in-the-cosmos-with-professor-j-craig-wheeler--62404997). Turned out I had both the words and the stamina. I don't expect anyone to listen to all this, except maybe for drivetime.

 

There have also been emails, hundreds of emails!

Amazingly, to me, it has been a year and eight months since that last blog post. I have not been asleep. A lot has gone on and adding to the blog was just not the highest priority.

 

In Fall of 2022, my agent, Regina Ryan, began sending out the proposal and faced some resistance. A common theme was "why publish on book on AI when the author is not an expert on AI?" I think my book is about more, but you have to face the world as it is. I tried submitting a couple of opinion pieces to the New York Times to garner attention. No luck. We kept revising the proposal. By November Regina decided to halt her sending out the proposal for the season and pick it up again in the spring. I rearranged the order of the chapters putting those on biological issues, including the evolution of humankind, in one group later in the book.

 

Looking back, one huge disruption was the announcement of Open AI's LLM ChatGPT in November of 2022. I'm trying to publish a book on the technological future of humanity and a revolution just occurred in the digital aspect of all that! Is my book now too late? I had intended it to be a primer. My response was to think (hope!) that with all the attention on ChatGPT, a significant piece of the world would appreciate a book that helped to explain what was going on and that a primer was just the thing. Of course, I had to go through the book and add some description of ChatGPT and its progeny.

 

In the meantime, Regina and I were discussing the structure of the book. She had always had an issue with the first chapter that was, frankly, somewhat pedantic. It was a remnant of the first lecture i gave in my class in 2013 outlining the astronomical background that lead us to today. That was relevant material, but it better belonged elsewhere in the book. I finally threw out that chapter and wrote a new one giving it a more "hair on fire" aspect suggesting how close we might actually be to development of an artificial general intelligence, designer babies, and mind-probing.

 

In spring of 2023, Regina and I continued to wrestle with how to revise the book and proposal in the new world of ChatGPT. We worked with the title "Wild Ride Ahead: The Future of Humanity and Technology." The New York Times began writing essentially daily articles on AI. I checked that ChatGPT and others did not seem to have absorbed the full texts of my novels. They did seem to have digested online commentary about them. Otherwise, I have not used LLMs. I signed the letter calling for a hiatus on AI LLM work, knowing the letter was pointless. Regina and I debated the last sentence of the book. I ended up with a judicious use of quotation marks to enunciate what I was trying to say. We settled on a revised proposal in May 2023 and Regina began sending it out. She got some more declines. Finally, on June 29, she got a positive response from Jonathan Kurtz at Prometheus books. I enjoy the irony of publishing a book about the new era of promethean developments in technology with a publisher of the same name. We rapidly decided that we would sign with Prometheus despite a somewhat lean advance. That began a whole new phase of hurry up and wait as contracts were interated and signed and the production process lumbered into action. I submitted my draft on October 20, 2023. I heard nothing until December 12 when it was summarily accepted. The title was changed to "The Path to Singularity: How Technology Will Challenge the Future of Humanity." I can work with that. A cover was designed. I reviewed the copyedited version in April, 2024. The book is scheduled for release in November 2024. Pre-orders available now.

 

I had known Neil Tyson since he was in graduate school here at the University of Texas. I watched with delight and amazement as he became Neil DeGrasse Tyson through talent, hard work, and his natural charisma. I had not been in touch with him for a long time, but in August 2022, I succumbed to pressure from Regina to see if he would write a foreward to the book. To my pleasant surprise, he graciously agreed. After the sale to Prometheus, he carefully read the whole book in detail and sent insightful comments on sentence structure, punctuation, and the functioning of the publishing business. Just before the new year, he sent the text of his foreword. He captured exactly the spirit of why a scientist, and especially an astrophysicist, is entitled to write on topics of general interest beyond their specific technical expertise. This was the heart of the discussion I had had with Regina for two years.

 

Throughout this interval, I continued to fiddle with this website. There is no question that Google and other search engines know about it, but it does not come up in a generic search on my name. Not enough traffic, I guess. I don't know what to do to imporove the situation. I have to become an expert in search engine optimization when I would rather be writing.

 

I'm looking forward to the publication of the book, but feeling some trepidation about marketing and publicizing that needs to be done before then.

 

Meanwhile, I'm about 2/3 through my dad's biography. I need to get back to that.

 

 

What happened to the book proposal mentioned in that post of April 25? Ah, well you might ask. Despite the aid of the Author's Questionnaire and a fair amount of work, my agent, in her quest to make the strongest case we could, kept thinking of new additions and refinements. We need a punchy Sales Handle to lead off. A couple of sentences that will make an acquisition editor hunger for more. Refined sales points. Can you get Neil deGrasse Tyson to accede to having his name used as at least considering to write an introduction? You say it is important that you have the broad perspective of space and time of an astronomer? Justify that in pungent prose. Say something about the James Webb Space Telescope, a hot new topic that is in the public's eye. Iterate on the title and explain your choice. Name some "comparable books," not necessarily on the same topic, but related best sellars to imply that my book is too, if only given the chance. Expand the list of competitive books, sort them into old and newer, explain how your book is different. Compile a list of of potential blurbers. Among a dozen others, I listed Elon Musk, an Austin businessman, and Jeff Bezos, a Texas businessman. If anyone has contact info, please let me know. List all 107 companies you mention by name in the book in case some might want to buy copies. Do you have as many Twitter followers as Beyonce (answer: no)? Write an annotated table of contents giving a synopsis of each of the 15 chapters. Re-write all that; you sound like a college professor! This is a sales pitch. Title all the subsections in each chapter and hence in the sample chapters.

 

This may sound like I'm complaining, but the fact is while the work was taxing, it was also stimulating. My agent made me dig deep into what I was writing and why. In any case, it took several months of intense work that then slacked off in midsummer and continued until today. In the meantime, I found bits and pieces to add to the book, another 8000 words. The draft is now 128,240 words.

 

My agent debated whether to submit the proposal over the summer or wait until after Labor Day when people were back at work. She finally elected the latter. When things slacked off on Brains, Genes, and the Cosmos, I worked on the biography of my father, tentatively entitled Eniwetok. There is a connection. I mean this to be not just the story of one man, but a reflection on the technology that developed over his lifetime. He worked on inertial navigation and ICBMs, a solar eclipse, the first hydrogen bomb, a proposed atomic airplane that could fly forever (at 200 mph 200 feet above the ground; it was destined to be heavy and slow. JFK cancelled it), weather satellites, and finally on the Apollo Program.

 

We are now in what I hope are the final iterations on the proposal. Double spaced with now four sample chapters, it comes to 41,000 words and 147 pages. There is some chance it will go off to publishers next week.

I have just sent off to my agent a draft of a book proposal for my book tentatively entitled Brains, Genes, and the Universe: the Technological Future of Humanity. The notion is that she will use that to approach publishers, trigger a bidding war, and the book will end up a New York Times bestseller. I'm not holding my breath.

 

It has taken quite a while to get here. I finished a draft of the book, 120,000 words, last November after two Covid years of regular effort. My agent then had me prepare an Author Questionnaire with all sorts of information about me, the book, and how we might sell it. That took me a couple of months of steady work, an hour or so a day, with iterations with my agent. That then led to filling out a template for the formal book proposal, making judicious use of the material from the Author Questionnaire. One portion of the proposal calls for an annotated Table of Contents that was forbidden from using any actual text from the book. I confess, I cheated and pulled some text from the book in my first pass through summarizing 15 chapters, but then I went back and edited to remove any self-plagiarizing. I'm not sure what the point is, but rules is rules.

 

The proposal also called for three sample chapters. I have to pick only three chapters from 15, each my precious baby? I picked the introductory chapter and two on brains, one on artificial brains, and one on the real thing.

 

I'm sure there will be more iteration with my agent, but we are getting closer to making the pitch and maybe getting out of the extensive spec work phase.