Intelligence Squared

When did you first hear of GPT, Claude, DALL-E or Bard? Feels like a while ago, right? In barely over a year AI has permeated our conversations, our places of work and it feels omnipresent in the culture. It also threatens to make some of the pillars of our society redundant. Join researcher and author Carl Miller for POWER TRIP, a brand new podcast from Intelligence Squared, to see where that journey is leading us. 

Want the future right now? Become a supporter of Intelligence Squared to get all five episodes of POWER TRIP to binge in one go. Just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. 

Technology is going to impact the future of humanity in ways that we may never have predicted and in the coming years perhaps in ways we can no longer control. In this first episode, Carl Miller guides us through the journey of how we got to this point in the story of AI and asks whether historians in the future will look at the era as one of pre-GPT and post-GPT. Featuring Michael Wooldridge, Director of Foundational AI Research at the Turing Institute and professor of computer science at the University of Oxford; Judy Wajcman, Principal Investigator of the Women in Data Science and AI project at The Alan Turing Institute; Henry Ajder, Generative AI & Deepfakes Expert Advisor and AI researcher Connor Leahy, CEO of Conjuncture.

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We revisit a debate from 2021 between the former Greek finance minister, economist and author Yanis Varoufakis, and Gillian Tett, the Financial Times columnist, anthropologist, and author. The two gathered to debate: Can We Fix Capitalism? Our chair was Politico's Anne McElvoy, who at time of recording was senior editor at The Economist. 

Gillian Tett is also Provost of Kings College at Cambridge University and a sought after voice whose smart insights can help put the often complex worlds of finance and the economy into perspective. Coming up on Wednesday 25 October 2023, Gillian Tett will be live onstage in London to discuss the economic outlook for 2024 ahead. The event in partnership with Y TREE is going to touch on issues such as how businesses can harness AI for the benefit of society and also the potential economic turbulence that could be the result of a second Trump presidency. Joining Tett onstage will be Johnny Dymond of BBC News. Follow the link below to purchase tickets and get ahead on the big economic ideas for the next 12 months. 

https://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/the-intelligence-squared-economic-outlook-with-gillian-tett/

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This is the second instalment of our two-part debate, with George Monbiot, Guardian columnist, environmental campaigner and author of Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet, arguing for the motion We Should All Go Vegan. Patrick Holden, Founder and chief executive of the Sustainable Food Trust, argues against it. Our chair is Alice Thomson, Columnist and interviewer at The Times.

Livestock farming contributes 14.5% of human-produced greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Farm animals belch out massive amounts of methane, one of the most harmful greenhouse gases. They are also extremely wasteful of resources, using up 83% of farmland worldwide while providing only 18% of our calories, guzzling soya and grain that could feed humans more efficiently, and requiring vast amounts of water. As for our health, vegan sports stars such as Venus and Serena Williams and Lewis Hamilton prove that you can be superfit on a plant-based diet, and research has linked vegan diets to lower rates of some diseases. That’s the argument made by the vegan lobby. But there are many experts who disagree on all counts. Take the environment. Few people realise the high carbon cost of growing crops – some 15-20% of the world’s CO2 output comes from ploughing – and that plants grown for food require vast amounts of fertiliser and pesticides that are derived from fossil fuels. Who’s right and who’s wrong? 

We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next, who we should have on and what our future debates should be. 

Send us an email or voice note with your thoughts to [email protected] or Tweet us @intelligence2. 

And if you’d like to support our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations, as well as ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content, early access and much more, become a supporter of Intelligence Squared.

Just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. 

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In this two-part debate, George Monbiot, Guardian columnist, environmental campaigner and author of Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet, argues for the motion We Should All Go Vegan. Patrick Holden, Founder and chief executive of the Sustainable Food Trust, argues against it. Our chair is Alice Thomson, Columnist and interviewer at The Times.

Livestock farming contributes 14.5% of human-produced greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Farm animals belch out massive amounts of methane, one of the most harmful greenhouse gases. They are also extremely wasteful of resources, using up 83% of farmland worldwide while providing only 18% of our calories, guzzling soya and grain that could feed humans more efficiently, and requiring vast amounts of water. As for our health, vegan sports stars such as Venus and Serena Williams and Lewis Hamilton prove that you can be superfit on a plant-based diet, and research has linked vegan diets to lower rates of some diseases. That’s the argument made by the vegan lobby. But there are many experts who disagree on all counts. Take the environment. Few people realise the high carbon cost of growing crops – some 15-20% of the world’s CO2 output comes from ploughing – and that plants grown for food require vast amounts of fertiliser and pesticides that are derived from fossil fuels. Who’s right and who’s wrong? 

We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next, who we should have on and what our future debates should be. 

Send us an email or voice note with your thoughts to [email protected] or Tweet us @intelligence2. 

And if you’d like to support our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations, as well as ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content, early access and much more, become a supporter of Intelligence Squared.

Just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. 

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Until recently, the Murdoch's formed the most powerful media and political force in America. Now their empire is cracking up and crashing down. Michael Wolff the acclaimed author of a trilogy of books about the the chaotic Trump presidency and the biographer of Rupert Murdoch comes to Intelligence Squared to discuss this real life Succession with Justin Webb.

The episode was produced and edited by Conor Boyle

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Tomiwa Owolade is a rising star of literary and cultural criticism in the UK. His first book is This Is Not America: Why Black Lives in Britain Matter. In this discussion, Owolade joins commentator Inaya Folarin Iman to argue that too much of the debate around race in Britain today is viewed through the prism of American ideas and history – models that don’t reflect the challenges and achievements of the increasingly diverse Black British population. 

We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next, who we should have on and what our future debates should be. 

Send us an email or voice note with your thoughts to [email protected] or Tweet us @intelligence2. 

And if you’d like to support our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations, as well as ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content, early access and much more, become a supporter of Intelligence Squared.

Just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. 

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Mark Galeotti is one of the world’s leading experts on modern Russia and is the author of books such as Putin’s Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine and The Weaponisation of Everything: A Field Guide to the New Way of War. In conversation with Intelligence Squared's Conor Boyle, he explains how the recent death of the Wagner mercenary Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin means that Russian President Vladimir Putin is losing powerful allies and those willing to carry out Russia's military agenda. How long can Putin cling onto power? 

We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next, who we should have on and what our future debates should be. 

Send us an email or voice note with your thoughts to [email protected] or Tweet us @intelligence2. 

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Philosopher Susan Neiman and cultural critic Thomas Chatterton Williams take part in a challenging conversation on the themes of Neiman’s new book Left is Not Woke. The book sets out what Neiman sees as the dangerous consequences of conflating ‘wokeism’ with the Left, arguing that this confusion threatens the core principles that have guided progressive movements for centuries.

We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next, who we should have on and what our future debates should be. 

Send us an email or voice note with your thoughts to [email protected] or Tweet us @intelligence2. 

And if you’d like to support our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations, as well as ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content, early access and much more, become a supporter of Intelligence Squared.

Just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. 

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Philip Gold is one of the world's leading researchers of depressive illness. Since 1974, he has worked at the National Institute of Health, where he has served as Chief of Neuroendocrine Research, and Senior Investigator in the National Institute of Mental Health Intramural Research Program, and Chief of the Section on Neuroendocrinology. For this episode, he joins science communicator and Postdoctoral fellow at The Francis Crick Institute, Dr Güneş Taylor, in conversation to talk about his life's work and the findings of his recent book: Breaking Through Depression. 

We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next, who we should have on and what our future debates should be. 

Send us an email or voice note with your thoughts to [email protected] or Tweet us @intelligence2.

And if you’d like to support our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations, as well as ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content, early access and much more, become a supporter of Intelligence Squared.

Just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. 

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Bestselling author and activist Naomi Klein goes down the rabbit hole in pursuit of her doppelganger – another well-known writer with a name similar to hers but whose views couldn’t be more different from her own. She finds herself returning again and again to a place she calls Mirror World, where conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers and wellness influencers make common cause with far-right propagandists and demagogues. In conversation with journalist Ruchira Sharma, Klein sheds light on our own culture as we turn ourselves into polished virtual brands, watch as deep fakes proliferate and whole nations flip from democracy to something far more sinister.

We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next, who we should have on and what our future debates should be. 

Send us an email or voice note with your thoughts to [email protected] or Tweet us @intelligence2. 

And if you’d like to support our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations, as well as ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content, early access and much more, become a supporter of Intelligence Squared.

Just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. 

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