Exponential View with Azeem Azhar

By HBR Presents / Azeem Azhar

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What's Exponential View with Azeem Azhar 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?

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.

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Big Tech and a Decade of An...

01.06.2021

Cory Doctorow, award-winning author, technologist, and founder joins Azeem Azhar to explore the power of big tech monopolies and how a future wave of antitrust lawsuits could unleash innovation across the sector.

Exponential View with Azeem Azhar episodes:

01.06.2021 Big Tech and a Decade of Antitrust with Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow, award-winning author, technologist, and founder joins Azeem Azhar to explore the power of big tech monopolies and how a future wave of antitrust lawsuits could unleash innovation across the sector.
12.30.2020 Learning from 2020: Azeem’s Takeaways Azeem Azhar reflects on how Covid-19 has affected technology and our lives in 2020 and why the effects of the pandemic will be felt for many years to come.
12.23.2020 Applying the Pandemic Mindset to Climate Change with Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow, award winning author, technologist, and founder, joins Azeem Azhar to explore how we can harness massive collective action and exponential technologies to mitigate climate change.
12.16.2020 Making Venture Capital Work for Entrepreneurs Leila Rastegar Zegna, general partner and co-founder of Kindred Capital, joins Azeem Azhar to explore a new model for venture capital, where startup founders become partners in the fund. This new approach aims to align incentives for entrepreneurs and investors, ...
12.09.2020 IKEA: Making a $40 Billion Company Climate Positive Jesper Brodin, CEO of Ingka Group, joins Azeem Azhar to explore IKEA’s goal to be a net reducer of carbon emissions by 2030 – while still growing its business.
12.02.2020 China’s Technology Transformation with Kai-Fu Lee Kai-Fu Lee, AI pioneer and investor, joins Azeem Azhar to explore the evolution of China’s vibrant tech sector, the rise of consumer-facing robots, the consequences for labor, and the future of educational technologies.
11.25.2020 Materials Built by Microbes: A Revolution in Materials Science Zymergen CEO Joshua Hoffman joins Azeem Azhar to explore how cutting-edge bioengineering, robotics, and machine learning are helping create a new generation of high-performance, environmentally sustainable materials for the 21st Century.
11.18.2020 Silicon Valley Needs a Shakedown with Chamath Palihapitiya Investor Chamath Palihapitiya joins Azeem Azhar to explore the dysfunctional relationship between capital and companies, why he loves a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company), and why he’s championing a new wave of climate change innovators. Note: Portions of the conversation ...
11.11.2020 How AI and Genomics Are Reshaping Farming “The time for vertical farming is here,” says Mike Zelkind, co-founder and CEO of 80 Acres Farms. He joins Azeem Azhar to explore what’s broken in the food supply chain, and how a new breed of high-tech, indoor farms could ...
11.09.2020 Understanding the Enduring Consequences of Covid-19 Yale professor Nicholas Christakis argues that we can expect this current phase of the Covid-19 pandemic to end in 2022. In conversation with Azeem Azhar, Christakis explains why we need to brace for what comes next.
11.04.2020 Should We End the Data Economy? Ownership of personal data is a form of power – and that power is concentrating in the hands of governments and big tech. Should we be worried? Dr. Carissa Véliz, from the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University ...
10.28.2020 Facebook’s Tech Chief: How We Built It and Where We’re Going Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer joins Azeem Azhar to explore how they built the infrastructure powering the social network, why AI and virtual reality are the core of its future, and how the company approaches content moderation.
10.21.2020 DeepMind’s Journey from Games to Fundamental Science DeepMind’s co-founder and CEO, Demis Hassabis, joins Azeem Azhar to explore his company's progression from gaming to accelerating scientific discovery.
10.14.2020 How Taiwan is Using Technology to Foster Democracy (with Digital Minister Audrey Tang) Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s first digital minister, joins Azeem Azhar to discuss how the Taiwanese Government is using the Internet as a space for civic participation, dialogue, and consensus building.
10.07.2020 How GPT-3 Is Shaping Our AI Future OpenAI stunned the world with the release of the world’s most impressive language-generating AI. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joins Azeem Azhar to reflect on the huge attention generated by GPT-3 and what it heralds for the future research and development ...
07.01.2020 Season 4 Finale: Azeem’s Favorite Episodes and Trends to Watch As we wrap up the season and head off to a short summer break, Azeem Azhar reflects on what he learned from his conversations with technology and business leaders on the podcast -- and how those insights may help us ...
06.24.2020 Reimagining Capitalism for a Broken World A thriving global economy depends on more than just free markets. Harvard Business School professor Rebecca Henderson offers a fresh vision of purpose-driven capitalism, where companies can make good profits by doing the right thing.
06.17.2020 Engineering Biology: The Next Frontier Drug discovery, novel materials, and genetic engineering are some of the topics under the microscope in Azeem Azhar’s discussion with Andreessen Horowitz general partner Vijay Pande. They explore the extraordinary possibilities that are opening up at the intersection of biology, ...
06.10.2020 Rethinking the Innovation Ecosystem Starting a company with a stranger is not the traditional path for many entrepreneurs, but this is one of the basic principles of Entrepreneur First (EF), the world’s leading talent investor. Matt Clifford, EF’s CEO and co-founder, joins Azeem Azhar ...
06.03.2020 Using AI to Decentralize Organizations As the Covid-19 pandemic forces companies to rethink their workflows and structures, Azeem Azhar speaks with Daniel Hulme, CEO of Satalia, whose company runs as a decentralized swarm. There are no managers, no strict job roles, and no vacation limits. ...
05.27.2020 Empowering Workers in the Digital Future Companies increasingly use digital systems to hire, fire, and monitor their employees. But who is keeping employers in check? Former union leader and AI ethics expert, Dr. Christina Colclough joins Azeem Azhar to discuss how to empower employees in the ...
05.20.2020 Building Better Cities After Covid-19 How do we build better cities after the coronavirus crisis? The World Bank’s Sameh Wahba joins Azeem Azhar to discuss how the World Bank partners with technologists to help cities on the frontline of the pandemic, and how the dynamism ...
05.13.2020 Fei-Fei Li’s Mission to Transform Healthcare AI After ImageNet transformed AI vision, superstar Stanford computer science professor Fei-Fei Li has turned her attention to advancing healthcare. She joins Azeem Azhar to discuss her new approach to AI development, which incorporates interdisciplinary collaboration and focuses on ethical, real-world ...
05.06.2020 How Nasdaq is Growing the World’s Digital Marketplace Nasdaq has evolved from being the world’s first digital marketplace to a global technology company. CEO Adena Friedman joins Azeem Azhar to discuss how their digital operation has become the model for markets around the world, the surprising importance of ...
04.29.2020 The Digital Future of the Supply Chain The Fung Group coordinates some of the world’s largest and most complex supply chains. Pamela Mar, EVP for Knowledge and Applications at Fung, joins Azeem Azhar to explore how developing digital connectivity can help to counteract the devastating repercussions of ...
04.27.2020 Lessons for an Aging World For the first time in history, there are more people on the planet over 65 years old, than under five. How do we adapt to this demographic transformation? Camilla Cavendish, award-winning journalist and former Director of Public Policy for UK ...
04.22.2020 The New Science of Aging Harvard geneticist David Sinclair joins Azeem Azhar to discuss his pioneering research into the pathways and processes responsible for aging, and the new treatments that could keep us younger for longer.
04.20.2020 Navigating Covid-19 in a Digital Republic (with President of Estonia Kersti Kaljulaid) President Kersti Kaljulaid joins Azeem Azhar to explore how legal and technological innovations have helped Estonia create the most advanced e-government in the world, and how this digital republic is navigating the Covid-19 pandemic.
04.15.2020 The Drive to Decarbonize Ramez Naam, clean energy investor and technologist, joins Azeem Azhar to discuss the economic and industrial forces that are accelerating us towards a zero-carbon future, as well as the major challenges that remain.
04.08.2020 Inside Alphabet’s X: Nurturing Radical Creativity Alphabet Inc.’s X (formerly Google X) creates the most daring innovations to tackle the world’s biggest problems. CEO Astro Teller joins Azeem Azhar to explain how he creates a culture of radical creativity and nurtures the audacity to fail.
04.01.2020 The Next Trillion-Dollar Market Softbank Vision Fund Senior Managing Partner, Deep Nishar joins Azeem Azhar to discuss how the confluence of AI, genomics, and automation are opening up new possibilities in biotech and materials science.
03.30.2020 Technology Companies and the New Recession The COVID-19 pandemic will cause an economic crisis never seen before, says equity analyst Pierre Ferragu. He joins Azeem Azhar to discuss how this crisis will affect the technology industry, in particular, in the short and long term.
03.24.2020 Science Fights the Coronavirus How effective is science at tackling COVID-19, and how will the pandemic evolve next?
03.18.2020 The Redecentralized Web Muneeb Ali, co-founder and CEO of Blockstack, a decentralized computing network, joins Azeem Azhar to discuss rebuilding the internet to give control back to users.
03.11.2020 Welfare in the Exponential Age Hilary Cottam, social entrepreneur and author of the acclaimed book, “Radical Help,” joins Azeem Azhar to discuss the future of welfare in the exponential age.
03.04.2020 How Humans Judge Machines Physicist and author, Cesar Hidalgo joins Azeem Azhar to discuss how understanding knowledge leads to insights on everything from the economic value of megacities to how to moralize machines.
02.26.2020 Can Airtable Democratize Software Development? Airtable founder Howie Liu and Azeem Azhar discuss what it means to create a new $100 billion market category.
02.19.2020 Geopolitics, Technology, and Risk Geopolitical expert Ian Bremmer joins Azeem Azhar to discuss how the forces of technology are shaping and threatening global stability.
02.12.2020 Surviving a Crisis During the Techlash Renowned crisis manager, lawyer, author, and television producer, Judy Smith, the inspiration for the TV show “Scandal,” joins Azeem Azhar to discuss what tech businesses need to know to stay on top of their reputation in an era of instantaneous ...
02.05.2020 Leading a Technology Giant During the Techlash Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, joins Azeem Azhar to discuss how regulation can advance the technology industry and innovation.
01.22.2020 Superintelligence Already Rules the World We've already been living with artificial decision-making machines for hundreds of years -- we call them corporations and states. That’s the argument David Runciman makes in conversation with Azeem Azhar in this week’s episode. Runciman is professor of politics at ...
12.18.2019 Building Unicorns in Europe Reshma Sohoni, co-founder and managing partner Seedcamp (a seed-stage fund focusing on Europe), joins Azeem Azhar to discuss what it takes to build a thriving startup ecosystem outside Silicon Valley, and how some of Europe’s most successful startups were created.
12.11.2019 The State of Nanotechnology One of the leading pioneers in the field of nanotechnology, physicist Sonia Contera joins Azeem Azhar to discuss how advances in biology, computing, and physics are bringing about another tech revolution that will change our lives.
12.04.2019 Cybersecurity in the Age of AI Nicole Eagan, CEO of Darktrace, one of the world’s leading cybersecurity firms, joins Azeem Azhar to discuss how artificial intelligence is opening a new battlefield for hackers, governments, and private companies alike.
11.27.2019 Growth and the Energy Transition with Vaclav Smil Vaclav Smil, preeminent expert on energy history and development, joins Azeem Azhar to discuss what is required for our fossil fuel-dependent civilization to transition to a sustainable energy system.
11.20.2019 AI, Accountability, and Power Meredith Whittaker, co-director of the AI Now Institute and one of the organizers of the Google Walkout in 2018, joins Azeem Azhar to discuss how discrimination and bias are influencing the development of artificial intelligence, and how tech workers are ...
11.13.2019 Technology and the New World of Work The reinvention of craftsmanship started in Silicon Valley, and it’s spreading and reshaping the rules of work. This is the thesis of Laetitia Vitaud’s latest book, “Du labeur à l’ouvrage (From Labor to Work)," which explores how technology is unbundling ...
11.06.2019 How Free-Market Economists Got It Wrong Azeem Azhar and Binyamin Appelbaum discuss how a group of free-market economists managed to reshape our modern world. They promised growth and broad prosperity, but instead left us with fractured societies and weakened democracies. Appelbaum is the author of the ...
10.30.2019 Beyond Deep Learning with Gary Marcus Gary Marcus has a reputation for being a contrarian in the AI community. Over the past several years, Marcus, a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and the author of “Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust,” has been a vocal critic of ...
10.23.2019 AI and the Future of Warfare Peace is fragile, especially when anyone can use open source technology to build a weapon to inflict harm, online and offline. General Sir Richard Barrons, former Commander of the UK’s Joint Forces Command, makes the case to Azeem Azhar that, ...

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