Azeem Azhar's Exponential View

By HBR Presents / Azeem Azhar

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What's Azeem Azhar's Exponential View about?

How will the future unfold? What is the impact of technology on business & society? As technology reorders the world in which live, who will be the winners and who will be the losers? Join Azeem Azhar, curator of the Exponential View newsletter, in deep conversation with the world's leading thinkers and practitioners exploring these and other important questions.

The views expressed on this podcast are those of its hosts, guests, and callers, and not those of Harvard Business Review.

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Introducing Exponentially w...

09.07.2023

As exponential technologies like artificial intelligence march on, the ability to make future-proof decisions is all the more important for leaders. Azeem Azhar’s new TV show and podcast, Exponentially with Azeem Azhar, goes beyond mainstream conversations about technology to explore ...

Azeem Azhar's Exponential View episodes:

09.07.2023 Introducing Exponentially with Azeem Azhar As exponential technologies like artificial intelligence march on, the ability to make future-proof decisions is all the more important for leaders. Azeem Azhar’s new TV show and podcast, Exponentially with Azeem Azhar, goes beyond mainstream conversations about technology to explore ...
05.26.2023 Azeem on AI: What Can the Copernican Revolution Teach Us about the Future of AI? In his brief commentary, Azeem Azhar discusses the increasing complexity and capabilities of large language models (LLMs) and the transformative potential they hold.
05.24.2023 Azeem on AI: Are Large Language Models the Future of the Web? In his brief commentary, Azeem Azhar lays out why the future of the Web is underpinned by AI, and what this means for the traditional business model of the internet.
05.19.2023 Azeem on AI: Where Will the Jobs Come from After AI? In his brief commentary, Azeem Azhar shares his outlook on how artificial intelligence will change the labor market, drawing on research published by Goldman Sachs.
05.17.2023 Azeem on AI: Will Large Language Models Reshape Our Economies? Drawing on Carlota Perez's framework, Azeem Azhar considers whether large language models, such as OpenAI's GPT-4, will drive a paradigm shift across our economies.
05.12.2023 Azeem’s Picks: AI’s Near Future with Jürgen Schmidhuber Artificial intelligence (AI) is dominating the headlines, but it’s not a new topic here on Exponential View. This week and next, Azeem Azhar shares his favorite conversations with AI pioneers. Their work and insights are more relevant than ever. Jürgen ...
05.10.2023 Azeem’s Picks: Beyond Deep Learning (with Gary Marcus) Artificial intelligence (AI) is dominating the headlines, but it’s not a new topic here on Exponential View. Azeem Azhar shares his favorite conversations with AI experts. Their work and insights are more relevant than ever. Gary Marcus has a reputation ...
05.05.2023 Azeem’s Picks: Demis Hassabis on DeepMind’s Journey from Games to Fundamental Science Artificial intelligence (AI) is dominating the headlines, but it’s not a new topic here on Exponential View. This week and next, Azeem Azhar shares his favorite conversations with AI pioneers. Their work and insights are more relevant than ever. DeepMind’s ...
05.03.2023 Azeem’s Picks: Sam Altman on How GPTs Are Shaping Our AI Future Artificial intelligence (AI) is dominating the headlines, but it’s not a new topic here on Exponential View. This week and next, Azeem Azhar shares his favorite conversations with AI pioneers. Their work and insights are more relevant than ever. OpenAI ...
06.22.2022 Upcoming Hiatus: What to Listen to While We’re Away After producing more than 160 episodes of Exponential View over the last six years, we’re taking a break to reflect on what we’ve learned and how the conversations we’ve hosted with leaders are changing our perspective on the future. While ...
06.15.2022 Can Entrepreneurs and Governments Team Up to Solve Big Problems? (from Cold Call) This episode is a special introduction to Cold Call, another podcast from Harvard Business Review. Host Brian Kenny explores Shield AI’s work with the U.S. government to develop autonomous combat robots. Harvard Business School professor Mitch Weiss and Brandon Tseng, ...
06.08.2022 The Co-Creator of the iPod and iPhone on Radical Innovation (with Tony Fadell) How do you talk about a product before anything like it exists? How do you guide the engineers building it and the marketing department who has to sell it? As co-creator of the iPod and iPhone, founder of the learning ...
06.01.2022 The Science and Economics of Carbon Recycling (with LanzaTech’s Jennifer Holmgren) Carbon recycling takes our polluting carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide and, with the help of bacteria, turns them into ethanol. This can replace oil as the basis for carbon-based chemicals industries (e.g., fertilizers, plastics, clothing, health and beauty products, etc.), ...
05.25.2022 Can Collective Intelligence Beat the Market? (with Numerai’s Richard Craib) Quantitative hedge funds, which rely on the work of employed mathematicians to develop complex trading strategies, are nothing new. But what if the mathematical work is outsourced to anyone, via a contest where the best predictions are rewarded with cryptocurrency? ...
05.18.2022 Hydrogen’s Role in Decarbonization (with Electric Hydrogen CEO Raffi Garabedian) Hydrogen has long been hyped as a fuel of the future. It’s abundant and its waste product is water. But it’s only recently that the availability of cheap renewable energy has allowed hydrogen to be produced competitively without the use ...
05.11.2022 Flying Taxis Are Coming (with Volocopter’s Florian Reuter) From The Jetsons to Back to the Future, flying cars are a staple of popular science fiction. German start-up Volocopter is working to turn that fiction into reality. Volocopter’s CEO Florian Reuter joins Azeem Azhar to explore how this radical ...
05.04.2022 How Web3 Is Changing Commerce and Governance (with Not Boring’s Packy McCormick) Web3’s ability to attach value and incentives to almost every part of human activity has radical implications not only for how businesses engage with their customers, but also for how people can self-organize to drive social change. Web3 investor and ...
04.27.2022 Gaming’s Web3 Future (with FTX Ventures’ Amy Wu) As the gaming industry evolves to meet the challenges and opportunities of Web3, could it drive the mass adoption of crypto? Amy Wu leads investment, M&A, and gaming initiatives at cryptocurrency exchange FTX. She speaks with Azeem Azhar about how ...
04.20.2022 Money in the Metaverse (with Citi’s Ronit Ghose) What is the metaverse, how will we use it, and why might the financial innovations of Web3 and blockchain technology be crucial to its success? Citi’s Ronit Ghose, one of the world’s foremost analysts of technology’s influence on financial innovation, ...
04.13.2022 Venture Capital and Deep Decarbonization (with Energy Impact Partners’ Shayle Kann) Venture capitalists offer their investors outsized financial returns in exchange for taking on considerable risk. But what if that risk includes backing products where the economics of the end market aren’t clear? Moreover, what if the companies being supported have ...
04.06.2022 AI and Cancer: Unlocking the Immune System (with Immunai’s Luis Voloch) Today’s cancer therapies are difficult, expensive, and slow to create. But the combination of new computing and new biological technologies is leading to a better understanding of the human immune system, with the goal of offering a better class of ...
03.31.2022 Bonus: The Future of Drones from What’s Your Problem? This episode is a special preview of the new podcast, What’s Your Problem? from Pushkin Industries. What’s Your Problem? explains the problems really smart people are trying to solve right now, from creating a drone delivery service to building a ...
03.30.2022 How To Make Nuclear Energy Safe (with Seaborg’s Troels Schönfeldt) Danish start-up Seaborg Technologies has a blueprint for the future of power that uses a new type of nuclear reactor that is safe, can be manufactured quickly, and deployed on barges to any location worldwide. Seaborg CEO Troels Schönfeldt talks ...
03.23.2022 The Meaning of Life in the Metaverse (with David Chalmers) We could soon be living more of our lives in immersive virtual worlds, but what will that look like and how will it affect us? New York University professor of philosophy and neural science David Chalmers discusses what the metaverse ...
03.16.2022 The Future of Warfare Is Here (with General Sir Richard Barrons) As war returns to Europe, General Sir Richard Barrons, former commander of the UK’s Joint Forces Command (whose remit included military intelligence, special forces, and cyber), joins Azeem Azhar to explore how technology is changing warfare and why we must ...
03.09.2022 How the Russia-Ukraine Conflict Will Change Cyberwar (with Robert Hannigan) Many experts expected Russia’s war with Ukraine to be accompanied by a large-scale cyberattack, but that hasn’t yet materialized. Azeem Azhar speaks to Robert Hannigan, the former head of GCHQ (the UK’s equivalent to America’s NSA), to find out how ...
03.02.2022 Vertical Farming and the Future of Food (with ZERO Farms’ Daniele Modesto) Technology is making traditional agriculture more efficient, but farming still has its problems. It takes a huge amount of land and can be energy- and water-intensive. In addition, produce needs to be transported to customers, often over great distances. Daniele ...
02.23.2022 Scaling Synthetic Biology (with Ginkgo’s Reshma Shetty) Science is getting better at re-engineering micro-organisms for all kinds of uses, from better medical treatments to more durable materials. But there are still hurdles to overcome, including scaling. Boston-based Ginkgo Bioworks was one of the first billion-dollar companies in ...
02.16.2022 Micromobility Will Change Our Cities (with Horace Dediu) Eighty percent of urban trips are less than two miles long. So why do so many of us make them in big, inefficient, and expensive vehicles? Micromobility analyst Horace Dediu joins Azeem Azhar to discuss why many more of us ...
02.09.2022 How Venture Capital Made the Modern World (with Sebastian Mallaby) Seventy-five percent of the total value of US companies that have floated since 1995 has been created by venture-backed firms, including Alphabet, Facebook, and countless others. But how did an obscure investment strategy become the engine of modern innovation and ...
02.02.2022 The Future of Healthcare: Personalization and AI (with ZOE’s Jonathan Wolf) Nutritional science has long been one-size-fits-all. Advice on a healthier diet has long been generic, failing to consider the huge variance of our bodies. ZOE is trying to change that by combining new research on our microbiomes with AI and ...
01.26.2022 What Studying Consciousness Can Reveal about AI and the Metaverse (with Anil Seth) The workings of the brain have long puzzled scientists and philosophers, but the last twenty years have been a golden age for consciousness research. Neuroscientist Anil Seth explains his theories on consciousness and why unlocking the secrets of our mind ...
01.19.2022 Supercritical’s Mission to Help Tech Reach Net Zero (with Michelle You) Companies of all sizes and sectors have committed to net-zero emissions targets, but getting there is not straightforward. Measuring carbon dioxide output is tricky, carbon markets are fragmented, and the quality of offsets varies hugely. Michelle You, co-founder and CEO ...
01.12.2022 Crypto and the Future of Money (with Terra’s Do Kwon) Some people see cryptocurrencies as speculative assets with no real utility at best, a Ponzi scam at worst. For others, they’re the future of money. Do Kwon, founder and CEO of Terraform Labs, the company behind the Terra blockchain, discusses ...
01.05.2022 Azeem’s 2022 Trends: Web 3.0, Sci-Fi Tech, and the Metaverse Azeem Azhar sets out his vision for 2022 and shares the trends that he thinks will change our world this year. Some changes are hurtling down the pike, like the growth of Web 3.0 and the metaverse, while others are ...
12.29.2021 Learning from 2021: Azeem’s Takeaways As 2021 draws to a close and Covid cases spike, it’s easy to think not much has changed. But in between pandemic waves, we’ve made major progress in science and technology. And that progress gives us clues about how the ...
12.22.2021 From Tech Investor to Author (with a16z’s Andrew Chen) Andreessen Horowitz general partner Andrew Chen and host Azeem Azhar have something in common: they were both tech company insiders and early-stage investors before becoming authors. They explore why they decided to write their books, how writing intersects with their ...
12.15.2021 How Quantum Computing Will Change Everything (with Chad Rigetti) Quantum computing won’t be an incremental improvement – it will represent a step-change in the power of the computing technology that underpins our modern economy. Exponentially faster computing won’t just help us solve problems more quickly – it will allow ...
12.08.2021 Nuclear Fusion’s Time is (Finally) Coming Nuclear fusion seems to have been “twenty years away” forever, but recent advances could mean fusion is finally on its way to becoming part of our energy mix. Azeem Azhar speaks to Nick Hawker, co-founder and CEO of First Light ...
12.01.2021 Grading AI: The Hits and Misses Murray Shanahan, professor of cognitive robotics at Imperial College London and a senior research scientist at DeepMind, joins Azeem Azhar to discuss AI: where developments have exceeded expectations, where they have fallen short, and what the next steps are towards ...
11.24.2021 Technology and Redistribution of Power (with Yanis Varoufakis) Former Greek Finance Minister, economist, and bestselling author Yanis Varoufakis joins Azeem Azhar to discuss his speculative novel Another Now. The book isn’t pure fiction; it’s an optimistic vision of what our society could yet become -- a world where ...
11.17.2021 The AI Revolution is Just Beginning (with Nathan Benaich and Ian Hogarth) Investors Nathan Benaich and Ian Hogarth co-author the influential, annual “State of AI” report. They join Azeem Azhar to discuss breakout developments in disparate fields, from defense to medical biology. And they offer their take on the flood of new ...
11.10.2021 Why Energy Storage Is the Future of the Grid (with Malta CEO Ramya Swaminathan) Renewable energy is the future of our power systems, but relying on solar, wind, etc. will require a more reliable and resilient grid. Energy storage will be essential, and Malta Inc.’s molten-salt system is one of the most innovative and ...
11.03.2021 Building a Multibillion-Dollar Company in 18 Months (with Hopin’s Johnny Boufarhat) Hopin is one of the fastest-growing startups in history. The virtual events company had six employees in February 2020, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. A year and a half later, it employs more than eight hundred and is ...
10.27.2021 Decarbonization by the Numbers (with Michele Della Vigna) Governments and companies have committed to net-zero emissions by 2050, but it’s not clear how they plan to get there – or how much it will cost. Michele Della Vigna, who runs the Carbonomics research program at Goldman Sachs, has ...
10.20.2021 The Future of the Car (with Ford’s Hau Thai-Tang) Ford has been making cars for 118 years -- nearly all of them with internal combustion engines. It now faces the biggest challenge in its history. Hau Thai-Tang, Ford’s chief product platform and operations officer, joins Azeem Azhar to discuss ...
10.13.2021 Funding Innovation to Fight Climate Change Fighting the climate crisis requires investment, innovation, and on-the-ground know-how. Dawn Lippert works at the intersection of all three. She’s the founder and CEO of Elemental Excelerator, a non-profit incubator that helps climate-focused startups deploy and scale their technologies. She ...
10.06.2021 How Network Effects Rule the World (with James Currier) Google, Facebook, Apple, and Uber are just some of the enormous companies that derive part of their value from network effects: the more users they have, the more value they provide. Serial entrepreneur and early-stage investor James Currier is one ...
07.07.2021 Imagining Climate Futures with Kim Stanley Robinson Kim Stanley Robinson, the legendary science-fiction novelist, has a private utopian hope: “to dodge a mass extinction event.” He joins Azeem Azhar to explore his recent novel, The Ministry For the Future, and what it would take for institutions, individuals, ...
06.30.2021 How to Regulate Facebook (with Nick Clegg) Facebook serves 34 percent of the world’s population and decides who to block and what to censor. How should governments regulate this startling power? Nick Clegg, the UK’s former deputy prime minister and now vice president of Global Affairs and ...

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