By London Futurists
Anticipating and managing exponential impact - hosts David Wood and Calum Chace
Calum Chace is a sought-after keynote speaker and best-selling writer on artificial intelligence. He fo
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The podcast currently has 96 episodes available.
Our guest in this episode is Matt Burgess. Matt is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wyoming, where he moved this year after six years at the University of Boulder, Colorado. He has specialised in the economics of climate change.
Calum met Matt at a recent event in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and knows from their conversations then that Matt has also thought deeply about the impact of social media, the causes of populism, and many other subjects.
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Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration
Our guest in this episode is Karl Pfleger. Karl is an angel investor in rejuvenation biotech startups, and is also known for creating and maintaining the website Aging Biotech Info. That website describes itself as “Structured info about aging and longevity”, and has the declared mission statement, “Everything important in the field (outside of academia), organized.”
Previously, Karl worked at Google from 2002 to 2013, as a research scientist and data analyst, applying AI and machine learning at scale. He has a BSE in Computer Science from Princeton, and a PhD in Computer Science and AI from Stanford.
Previous London Futurists Podcast episodes mentioned in this conversation:
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Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration
Our guest today is Pedro Domingos, who is joining an elite group of repeat guests – he joined us before in episode 34 in April 2023.
Pedro is Professor Emeritus Of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. He has done pioneering work in machine learning, like the development of Markov logic networks, which combine probabilistic reasoning with first-order logic. He is probably best known for his book "The Master Algorithm" which describes five different "tribes" of AI researchers, and argues that progress towards human-level general intelligence requires a unification of their approaches.
More recently, Pedro has become a trenchant critic of what he sees as exaggerated claims about the power and potential of today’s AI, and of calls to impose constraints on it.
He has just published “2040: A Silicon Valley Satire”, a novel which ridicules Big Tech and also American politics.
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Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration
Our guest in this episode is the journalist and author James Ball. James has worked for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, The Guardian, WikiLeaks, BuzzFeed, The New European, and The Washington Post, among other organisations. As special projects editor at The Guardian, James played a key role in the Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the NSA leaks by Edward Snowden.
Books that James has written include “Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World”, “Bluffocracy”, which makes the claim that Britain is run by bluffers, “The System: Who Owns the Internet, and How It Owns Us”, and, most recently, “The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World”.
That all adds up to enough content to fill at least four of our episodes, but we mainly focus on the ideas in the last of these books, about digital pandemics.
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Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration
In this episode, we have not one guest but two – Brett King and Robert Tercek, the hosts of the Futurists Podcast.
Brett King is originally from Australia, and is now based in Thailand. He is a renowned author, and the founder of a breakthrough digital bank. He consults extensively with clients in the financial services industry.
Robert Tercek, based in the United States, is an expert in digital media with a successful career in broadcasting and innovation which includes serving as a creative director at MTV and a senior vice president at Sony Pictures. He now consults to CEOs about digital transformation.
David and Calum had the pleasure of joining them on their podcast recently, where the conversation delved into the likely future impacts of artificial intelligence and other technologies, and also included politics.
This return conversation covers a wide range of themes, including the dangers of Q-day, the prospects for technological unemployment, the future of media, different approaches to industrial strategy, a plea to "bring on the machines", and the importance of "thinking more athletically about the future".
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Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration
Our guest in this episode is Jordan Sparks, the founder and executive director of Oregon Brain Preservation (OBP), which is located at Salem, the capital city of Oregon. OBP offers the service of chemically preserving the brain in the hope of future restoration.
Previously, Jordan was a dentist and a computer programmer, and he was successful enough in those fields to generate the capital required to start OBP.
Brain preservation is a fascinating subject that we have covered in a number of recent episodes, in which we have interviewed Kenneth Hayworth, Max More, and Emil Kendziorra.
Most people whose brains have been preserved for future restoration have undergone cryopreservation, which involves cooling the brain (and sometimes the whole body) down to a very low temperature and keeping it that way. OBP does offer that service occasionally, but its focus – which may be unique – is chemical fixation of the brain.
Previous episodes on biostasis and brain preservation:
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Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration
Our guest in this episode is Holly Joint, who was born and educated in the UK, but lives in Abu Dhabi in the UAE.
Holly started her career with five years at the business consultancy Accenture, and then worked in telecomms and banking. The latter took her to the Gulf, where she then spent what must have been a fascinating year as programme director of Qatar’s winning bid to host the 2022 World Cup. Since then she has run a number of other start-ups and high-growth businesses in the Gulf.
Holly is currently COO of Trivandi and also has a focus on helping women to have more power in a future dominated by technology.
Calum met Holly at a conference in Dubai this year, where she quizzed him on-stage about machine consciousness.
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Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration
How do we keep technology from slipping beyond our control? That’s the subtitle of the latest book by our guest in this episode, Wendell Wallach.
Wendell is the Carnegie-Uehiro fellow at Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, where he co-directs the Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative. He is also Emeritus Chair of Technology and Ethics Studies at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, a scholar with the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics, a fellow at the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technology, and a senior advisor to The Hastings Center.
Earlier in his life, Wendell was founder and president of two computer consulting companies, Farpoint Solutions and Omnia Consulting Inc.
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Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration
Our guest in this episode is Dr. Emil Kendziorra. Emil graduated summa cum laude, which means, with the highest honours, from the University of Göttingen in Germany, having previously studied at the University of Pécs in Hungary. For several years, he then devoted himself to cancer research with the hope of contributing to longevity science. After realizing how slowly life-extension research was progressing, he pivoted into entrepreneurship. He has been CEO of multiple tech and medical companies, most recently as a Founder and CEO of Medlanes and onFeedback, which were sold, respectively, to Zava and QuestionPro.
Emil then decided to dedicate the next decades of his life, he says, to advancing medical biostasis and cryomedicine. He is currently the CEO of Tomorrow Bio and the President of the Board at the European Biostasis Foundation.
A special offer:
Thanks to Tomorrow Bio, an offer has been created, exclusively for listeners to the London Futurists Podcast who decide to become members of Tomorrow Bio after listening to this episode. When signing up online, use the code mentioned toward the end of the episode to reduce the cost of monthly or annual subscriptions by 30%.
Small print: This offer doesn’t apply to lifetime subscriptions, and is only available to new members of Tomorrow Bio. Importantly, this offer will expire on 15 September 2024, so don’t delay if you want to take advantage of it.
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Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration
This episode is a bit different from the usual, because we are interviewing Calum's boss. Calum says that mainly to tease him, because he thinks the word “boss” is a dirty word.
His name is Daniel Hulme, and this is his second appearance on the podcast. He was one of our earliest guests, long ago, in episode 8. Back then, Daniel had just sold his AI consultancy, Satalia, to the advertising and media giant WPP. Today, he is Chief AI Officer at WPP, but he is joining us to talk about his new venture, Conscium - which describes itself as "the world's first applied AI consciousness research organisation".
Conscium states that "our aim is to deepen our understanding of consciousness to pioneer efficient, intelligent, and safe AI that builds a better future for humanity".
Also joining us is Ted Lappas, who is head of technology at Conscium, and he is also one of our illustrious former guests on the podcast.
By way of full disclosure, Calum is CMO at Conscium, and David is on the Conscium advisory board.
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Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration
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