Ben Goertzel is a cognitive scientist and artificial intelligence researcher. He is CEO and founder of SingularityNET, leader of the OpenCog Foundation, and chair of Humanity+.

Ben is perhaps best-known for popularising the term 'artificial general intelligence', or AGI, a machine with all the cognitive abilities of an adult human. He thinks that the way to create this machine is to start with a baby-like AI, and raise it, as we raise children. We would do this either in VR, or in robot form. Hence he works with the robot-builder David Hanson to create robots like Sophia and Grace.

Ben is a unique and engaging speaker, and gives frequent keynotes all round the world. Both his appearance and his views have been described as counter-cultural. In this episode, we hear about Ben's vision for the creation of benevolent decentralized AGI.

Selected follow-up reading:
https://singularitynet.io/
http://goertzel.org/
http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/

Topics in this conversation include:
*) Occasional hazards of humans and robots working together
*) "The future is already here, it's just not wired together properly"
*) Ben's definition of AGI
*) Ways in which humans lack "general intelligence"
*) Changes in society expected when AI reaches "human level"
*) Is there "one key thing" which will enable the creation of AGI?
*) Ben's OpenCog Hyperon project combines three approaches: neural pattern recognition and synthesis, rigorous symbolic reasoning, and  evolutionary creativity
*) Parallel combinations versus sequential combinations of AI capabilities: why the former is harder, but more likely to create AGI
*) Three methods to improve the scalability of AI algorithms: mathematical innovations, efficient concurrent processing, and an AGI hardware board
*) "We can reach the Singularity in ten years if we really, really try"
*) ... but humanity has, so far, not "really tried" to apply sufficient resources to creating AGI
*) Sam Altman: "If you talk about the upsides of what AGI could do for us, you sound like a crazy person"
*) "The benefits of AGI will challenge our concept of 'what is a benefit'"
*) Options for human life trajectories, if AGIs are well disposed towards humans
*) We will be faced with the questions of "what do we want" and "what are our values"
*) The burning issue is "what is the transition phase" to get to AGI
*) Ben's disagreements with Nick Bostrom and Eliezer Yudkowsky
*) Assessment of the approach taken by OpenAI to create AGI
*) Different degrees of faith in big tech companies as a venue for hosting the breakthroughs in creating AGI
*) Should OpenAI be renamed as "ClosedAI"?
*) The SingularityNET initiative to create a decentralized, democratically controlled infrastructure for AGI
*) The development of AGI should be "more like Linux or the Internet than Windows or the mobile phone ecosystem"
*) Limitations of neural net systems in self-understanding
*) Faith in big tech and capitalism vs. faith in humanity as a whole vs. faith in reward maximization as a paradigm for intelligence
*) Open-ended intelligence vs. intelligence created by reward maximization
*) A concern regarding Effective Altruism
*) There's more to intelligence than pursuit of an overarching goal
*) A broader view of evolution than drives to survive and to reproduce
*) "What the fate of humanity depends on" - selecting the right approach to the creation of AGI

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

At a time when many people find it depressingly easy to see how "bad futures" could arise, what is a credible narrative of a "good future"? That question is of central concern to our guest in this episode, Gerd Leonhard.

Gerd is one of the most successful futurists on the international speaker circuit. He estimates that he has spoken to a combined audience of 2.5 million people in more than 50 countries.

He left his home country of Germany in 1982 to go to the USA to study music. While he was in the US, he set up one of the first internet-based music businesses, and then he parlayed that into his current speaking career. His talks and videos are known for their engaging use of technology and design, and he prides himself on his rigorous use of research and data to back up his claims and insights.

Selected follow-ups:
https://www.futuristgerd.com/
https://www.futuristgerd.com/sharing/thegoodfuturefilm/

Topics in this conversation include:

*) The need for a positive antidote to all the negative visions of the future that are often in people's minds
*) People, planet, purpose, and prosperity - rather than an over-focus on profit and economic growth
*) Anticipating stock markets that work differently, and with additional requirements before dividends can be paid
*) A reason to be an optimist: not because we have less problems (we don't), but because we have more capacity to deal with these problems
*) From "capitalism" to "progressive capitalism" (another name could be "social capitalism")
*) Kevin Kelly's concept of "protopia" as a contrast to both utopia and dystopia
*) Too much of a good thing can be... a bad thing
*) How governments and the state interact with free markets
*) Managers who try to prioritise people, planet, or purpose (rather than profits and dividends) are "whacked by the stock market"
*) The example of the Montreal protocol regarding the hole in the ozone layer, when governments gave a strong direction to the chemical industry
*) Some questions about people, planet, purpose, and prosperity are relatively straightforward, but others are much more contested
*) Conflicting motivations within high tech firms regarding speed-to-market vs. safety
*) Controlling the spread of potentially dangerous AI may be much harder than controlling the spread of nuclear weapons technology, especially as costs reduce for AI development and deployment
*) Despite geopolitical tensions, different countries are already collaborating behind the scenes on matters of AGI safety
*) How much "financial freedom" should the definition of a good future embrace?
*) Universal Basic Income and "the Star Trek economy" as potential responses to the Economic Singularity
*) Differing assessments of the role of transhumanism in the good future
*) Risks when humans become overly dependent on technology
*) Most modern humans can't make a fire from scratch: does that matter?
*) The Carrington Event of 1859: the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history
*) How views changed in the 19th century about giving anaesthetics to women to counter the (biblically mandated?) intense pains of childbirth
*) Will views change in a similar way about the possibility of external wombs (ectogenesis)?
*) Jamie Bartlett's concept of "the moral singularity" when humans lose the ability to take hard decisions
*) Can AI provide useful advice about human-human relationships?
*) Is everything truly important about humans located in our minds?

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Our guest in this episode is Francesca Rossi. Francesca studied computer science at the University of Pisa in Italy, where she became a professor, before spending 20 years at the University of Padova. In 2015 she joined IBM's T.J. Watson Research Lab in New York, where she is now an IBM Fellow and also IBM's AI Ethics Global Leader.

Francesca is a member of numerous international bodies concerned with the beneficial use of AI, including being a board member at the Partnership on AI, a Steering Committee member and designated expert at the Global Partnership on AI, a member of the scientific advisory board of the Future of Life Institute, and Chair of the international conference on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society which is being held in Montreal in August this year.

From 2022 until 2024 she holds the prestigious role of the President of the AAAI, that is, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. The AAAI has recently held its annual conference, and in this episode, Francesca shares some reflections on what happened there.

Selected follow-ups:
https://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=ibm-Francesca.Rossi2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesca_Rossi
https://partnershiponai.org/
https://gpai.ai/

Topics in this conversation include:

*) How a one-year sabbatical at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute changed the trajectory of Francesca's life
*) New generative AI systems such as ChatGPT expand previous issues involving bias, privacy, copyright, and content moderation - because they are trained on very large data sets that have not been curated
*) Large language models (LLMs) have been optimised, not for "factuality", but for creating language that is syntactically correct
*) Compared to previous AIs, the new systems impact a wider range of occupations, and they also have major implications for education
*) Are the "AI ethics" and "responsible AI" approaches that address the issues of existing AI systems also the best approaches for the "AI alignment" and "AI safety" issues raised by artificial general intelligence?
*) Different ideas on how future LLMs could acquire mastery, not only over language, but also over logic, inference, and reasoning
*) Options for combining classical AI techniques focussing on knowledge and reasoning, with the data-intensive approaches of LLMs
*) How "foundation models" allow training to be split into two phases, with a shorter supervised phase customising the output from a prior longer unsupervised phase
*) Even experts face the temptation to anthropomorphise the behaviour of LLMs
*) On the other hand, unexpected capabilities have emerged within LLMs
*) The interplay of "thinking fast" and "thinking slow" - adapting, for the context of AI, insights from Daniel Kahneman about human intelligence
*) Cross-fertilisation of ideas from different communities at the recent AAAI conference
*) An extension of that "bridge" theme to involve ideas from outside of AI itself, including the use of methods of physics to observe and interpret LLMs from the outside
*) Prospects for interpretability, explainability, and transparency of AI - and implications for trust and cooperation between humans and AIs
*) The roles played by different international bodies, such as PAI and GPAI
*) Pros and cons of including China in the initial phase of GPAI
*) Designing regulations to be future-proof, with parts that can change quickly
*) An important new goal for AI experts
*) A vision for the next 3-5 years

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

In this episode, Tim Clement-Jones brings us up to date on the reactions by members of the UK's House of Commons to recent advances in the capabilities of AI systems, such as ChatGPT. He also looks ahead to larger changes, in the UK and elsewhere.

Lord Clement-Jones CBE, or Tim, as he prefers to be known, has been a very successful lawyer, holding senior positions at ITV and Kingfisher among others, and later becoming London Managing Partner of law firm DLA Piper.

He is better known as a politician. He became a life peer in 1998, and has been the Liberal Democrats’ spokesman on a wide range of issues. The reason we are delighted to have him as a guest on the podcast is that he was the chair of the AI Select Committee, Co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on AI, and is now a member of a special inquiry on the use of AI in Weapons Systems.

Tim also has multiple connections with universities and charities in the UK.

Selected follow-up reading:
https://www.lordclementjones.org/
https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/APPG/artificial-intelligence
https://arcs.qmul.ac.uk/governance/council/council-membership/timclement-jones.html

Topics in this conversation include:

*) Does "the Westminster bubble" understand the importance of AI?
*) Evidence that "the tide is turning" - MPs are demonstrating a spirit of inquiry
*) The example of Sir Peter Bottomley, the Father of the House (who has been an MP continuously since 1975)
*) New AI systems are showing characteristics that had not been expected to arrive for another 5 or 10 years, taking even AI experts by surprise
*) The AI duopoly (the US and China) and the possible influence of the UK and the EU
*) The forthcoming EU AI Act and the risk-based approach it embodies
*) The importance of regulatory systems being innovation-friendly
*) How might the EU support the development of some European AI tech giants?
*) The inevitability(?) of the UK needing to become "a rule taker"
*) Cynical and uncynical explanations for why major tech companies support EU AI regulation
*) The example of AI-powered facial recognition: benefits and risks
*) Is Brexit helping or hindering the UK's AI activities?
*) Complications with the funding of AI research in the UK's universities
*) The risks of a slow-down in the UK's AI start-up ecosystem
*) Looking further afield: AI ambitions in the UAE and Saudi Arabia
*) The particular risks of lethal autonomous weapons systems
*) Future conflicts between AI-controlled tanks and human-controlled tanks
*) Forecasts for the arrival of artificial general intelligence: 10-15 years from now?
*) Superintelligence may emerge from a combination of separate AI systems
*) The case for "technology-neutral" regulation

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Advanced AI is currently pretty much a duopoly between the USA and China. The US is the clear leader, thanks largely to its tech giants – Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple. China also has a fistful of tech giants – Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent are the ones usually listed, but the Chinese government has also taken a strong interest in AI since Deep Mind’s Alpha Go system beat the world’s best Go player in 2016.

People in the West don’t know enough about China’s current and future role in AI. Some think its companies just copy their Western counterparts, while others think it is an implacable and increasingly dangerous enemy, run by a dictator who cares nothing for his people. Both those views are wrong.

One person who has been trying to provide a more accurate picture of China and AI in recent years is Jeff Ding, the author of the influential newsletter ChinAI.

Jeff grew up in Iowa City and is now an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. He earned a PhD at Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and wrote his thesis on how past technological revolutions influenced the rise and fall of great powers, with implications for U.S.-China competition. After gaining his doctorate he worked at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute and Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

Selected follow-up reading:
https://jeffreyjding.github.io/
https://chinai.substack.com/
https://www.tortoisemedia.com/intelligence/global-ai/

Topics in this conversation include:

*) The Thucydides Trap: Is conflict inevitable as a rising geopolitical power approaches parity with an established power?
*) Different ways of trying to assess how China's AI industry compares with that of the U.S.
*) Measuring innovations in creating AI is different from measuring adoption of AI solutions across multiple industries
*) Comparisons of papers submitted to AI conferences such as NeurIPS, citations, patents granted, and the number of data scientists
*) The biggest misconceptions westerners have about China and AI
*) A way in which Europe could still be an important player alongside the duopoly
*) Attitudes in China toward data privacy and facial recognition
*) Government focus on AI can be counterproductive
*) Varieties of government industrial policy: the merits of encouraging decentralised innovation
*) The Titanic and the origin of Silicon Valley
*) Mariana Mazzucato's question: "Who created the iPhone?"
*) Learning from the failure of Japan's 5th Generation Computers initiative
*) The evolution of China's Social Credit systems
*) Research by Shazeda Ahmed and Jeremy Daum
*) Factors encouraging and discouraging the "splinternet" separation of US and Chinese tech ecosystems
*) Connections that typically happen outside of the public eye
*) Financial interdependencies
*) Changing Chinese government attitudes toward Chinese Internet giants
*) A broader tension faced by the Chinese government
*) Future scenarios: potential good and bad developments
*) Transnational projects to prevent accidents or unauthorised use of powerful AI systems

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Peter James is one of the world’s most successful crime writers. His "Roy Grace" series, about a detective in Brighton, England, near where Peter lives, has produced a remarkable 19 consecutive Sunday Times Number One bestsellers. His legions of devoted fans await each new release eagerly. The books have been televised, with the third series of "Grace", starting John Simm, being commissioned for next year.

Peter has worked in other genres too, having written 36 novels altogether. When Calum first met Peter in the mid-1990s, Peter's science fiction novel “Host” was generating rave reviews. It was the world’s first electronically published novel, and a copy of its floppy disc version is on display in London’s Science Museum.

Peter is also a self-confessed petrol-head, with an enviable collection of classic cars, and a pretty successful track record of racing some of them. The discussion later in the episode addresses the likely arrival of self-driving cars. But we start with the possibility of mind uploading, which is the subject of “Host”.

Selected follow-up reading:
https://www.peterjames.com/
https://www.alcor.org/

Topics in this conversation include:

*) Peter's passion for the future
*) The transformative effect of the 1990 book "Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition"
*) A Christmas sojourn at MIT and encounters with AI pioneer Marvin Minsky
*) The origins of the ideas behind "Host"
*) Meeting Alcor, the cryonics organisation, in Riverside California
*) How cryonics has evolved over the decades
*) "The first person to live to 200 has already been born"
*) Quick summaries of previous London Futurists Podcast episodes featuring Aubrey de Grey and Andrew Steele
*) The case for doing better than nature
*) Peter's novel "Perfect People" and the theme of "designer babies"
*) Possible improvements in the human condition from genetic editing
*) The risk of a future "genetic underclass"
*) Technology divides often don't last: consider the "fridge divide" and the "smartphone divide"
*) Calum's novel "Pandora's Brain"
*) Why Peter is comfortable with the label "transhumanist"
*) Various ways of reading (many) more books
*) A thought experiment involving a healthy 99 year old
*) If people lived a lot longer, we might take better care of our planet
*) Peter's views on technology assisting writers
*) Strengths and weaknesses of present-day ChatGPT as a writer
*) Prospects for transhumans to explore space
*) The "bunker experiments" into the circadian cycle, which suggest that humans naturally revert to a daily cycle closer to 26 hours than 24 hours
*) Possible answers to Fermi's question about lack of any sign of alien civilisations
*) Reflections on "The Pale Blue Dot of Earth" (originally by Carl Sagan)
*) The likelihood of incredible surprises in the next few decades
*) Pros and cons of humans driving on public roads (especially when drivers are using mobile phones)
*) Legal and ethical issues arising from autonomous cars
*) Exponential change often involves a frustrating slow phase before fast breakthroughs
*) Anticipating the experience of driving inside immersive virtual reality
*) The tragic background to Peter's book "Possession"
*) A concluding message from the science fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Our guest in this episode is a Briton who is based in Berlin, namely Andrew Steele. Earlier in his life Andrew spent nine years at the University of Oxford where, among other accomplishments, he gained a PhD in physics. His focus switched to computational biology, and he held positions at Cancer Research UK and the Francis Crick Institute.

Along the way, Andrew decided that aging was the single most important scientific challenge of our time. This led him to write the book "Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old". There are a lot of books these days about the science of slowing, stopping, and even reversing aging, but Andrew's book is perhaps the best general scientific introduction to this whole field.

Selected follow-ups:
https://andrewsteele.co.uk/
https://www.youtube.com/DrAndrewSteele
https://ageless.link/

Topics in this conversation include:
*) The background that led Andrew to write his book "Ageless"
*) A graph that changed a career
*) The chance of someone dying in the next year doubles every eight years they live
*) For tens of thousand of years, human life expectancy didn't change 
*) In recent centuries, the background mortality rate has significantly decreased, but the eight year "Gompertz curve" doubling of mortality remains unchanged
*) Some animals do not have this mortality doubling characteristic; they are said to be "negligibly senescent", "biologically immortal", or "ageless"
*) An example: Galapagos tortoises
*) The concept of "hallmarks of aging" - and different lists of these hallmarks
*) Theories of aging: wear-and-tear vs. programmed obsolescence
*) Evolution and aging: two different strategies that species can adopt
*) Wear-and-tear of teeth - as seen from a programmed aging point-of-view
*) The case for a pragmatic approach
*) Dietary restriction and healthier aging
*) The potential of computational biology system models to generate better understanding of linkages between different hallmarks of aging
*) Might some hallmarks, for example telomere shortening or epigenetic damage, prove more fundamental than others?
*) Special challenges posed by damage in the proteins in the scaffolding between cells
*) What's required to accelerate the advent of "longevity escape velocity"
*) Excitement and questions over the funding available to Altos Labs
*) Measuring timescales in research dollars rather than years
*) Reasons for optimism for treatments of some of the hallmarks, for example with senolytics, but others aren't being properly addressed
*) Breakthrough progress with the remaining hallmarks could be achieved with $5-10B investment each
*) Adding some extra for potential unforeseen hallmarks, that sums to a total of around $100B before therapies for all aspects of aging could be in major clinical trials
*) Why such an expenditure is in principle relatively easily affordable
*) Reflections on moral and ethical objections to treatments against aging
*) Overpopulation, environmental strains, resource sustainability, and net zero impact
*) Aging as the single largest cause of death in the world - in all countries
*) Andrew's current and forthcoming projects, including a book on options for funding science with the biggest impact
*) Looking forward to "being more tortoise".

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

It is nearly 40 years since our guest in this episode, pioneering transhumanist Natasha Vita-More, created the first version of the Transhumanist Manifesto. Since that time, Natasha has established numerous core perspectives, values, and actions in the global transhumanist family.

Natasha joins us in this episode to share her observations on how transhumanism has evolved over the decades, and to reflect on her work in building the movement—from practice-based approaches, scientific contributions, and theoretical innovations.

Areas we explore include: How has Natasha's work seeded the global growth of transhumanism? What are the main advances over the years that she particularly values? And what are the disappointments?

We also look to the future: What are her hopes and expectations for the next ten years of transhumanism?

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Selected follow-up reading:

https://natashavita-more.com/
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2004/02/vital-progress-summit/
http://www.extropy.org/proactionaryprinciple.htm
https://metanexus.net/transhumanism-and-its-critics/
https://whatistranshumanism.org/
https://www.alcor.org/library/persistence-of-long-term-memory-in-vitrified-and-revived-simple-animals/
https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html
F. M. Esfandiary: https://archives.nypl.org/mss/4846
https://www.maxmore.com/
The World’s Most Dangerous Idea? https://nickbostrom.com/papers/dangerous
https://theconversation.com/the-end-of-history-francis-fukuyamas-controversial-idea-explained-193225
https://www.humanityplus.org/
https://transhumanist-studies.teachable.com/
Anyone Can Code, Ethiopia: https://icogacc.com/
https://afrolongevity.taffds.org/

Our guest in this episode is the scientist and science fiction author Davin Brin, whose writings have won the Hugo, Locus, Campbell, and Nebula Awards. His style is sometimes called 'hard science fiction'. This means his narratives feature scientific or technological change that is plausible rather than purely magical. The scenarios he creates are thought-provoking as well as entertaining. His writing inspires readers but also challenges them, with important questions not just about the future, but also about the present.

Perhaps his most famous non-fiction work is his book "The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?", first published in 1998. With each passing year it seems that the questions and solutions raised in that book are becoming ever more pressing. One aspect of this has been called Brin's Corollary to Moore's Law: Every year, the cameras will get smaller, cheaper, more numerous and more mobile.

David also frequently writes online about topics such as space exploration, attempts to contact aliens, homeland security, the influence of science fiction on society and culture, the future of democracy, and much more besides.

Topics discussed in this conversation include:

*) Reactions to reports of flying saucers
*) Why photographs of UFOs remain blurry
*) Similarities between reports of UFOs and, in prior times, reports of elves
*) Replicating UFO phenomena with cat lasers
*) Changes in attitudes by senior members of the US military
*) Appraisals of the Mars Rovers
*) Pros and cons of additional human visits to the moon
*) Why alien probes might be monitoring this solar system from the asteroid belt
*) Investigations of "moonlets" in Earth orbit
*) Looking for pi in the sky
*) Reasons why life might be widespread in the galaxy - but why life intelligent enough to launch spacecraft may be rare
*) Varieties of animal intelligence: How special are humans?
*) Humans vs. Neanderthals: rounds one and two
*) The challenges of writing about a world that includes superintelligence
*) Kurzweil-style hybridisation and Mormon theology
*) Who should we admire most: lone heroes or citizens?
*) Benefits of reciprocal accountability and mutual monitoring (sousveillance)
*) Human nature: Delusions, charlatans, and incantations
*) The great catechism of science
*) Two levels at which the ideas of a transparent society can operate
*) "Asimov's Laws of Robotics won't work"
*) How AIs might be kept in check by other AIs
*) The importance of presenting gedanken experiments

Fiction mentioned (written by David Brin unless noted otherwise):
The Three-Body Problem (Liu Cixin)
Existence
The Sentinel (Arthur C. Clarke)
Startide Rising
The Uplift War
Kiln People
The Culture Series (Iain M. Banks)
The Expanse (James S.A. Corey)
The Postman (the book and the film)
Stones of Significance
Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Selected follow-up reading:
http://www.davidbrin.com/
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2021/07/whats-really-up-with-uaps-ufos.html

OpenAI's ChatGPT and picture generating AI systems like MidJourney and Stable Diffusion have got a lot more people interested in advanced AI and talking about it. Which is a good thing. It will not be pretty if the transformative changes that will happen in the next two or three decades take most of us by surprise.

A company that has been pioneering advanced AI for longer than most is IBM, and we are very fortunate to have with us in this episode one of IBM’s most senior executives.

Alessandro Curioni has been with the company for 25 years. He is an IBM Fellow, Director of IBM Research, and Vice President for Europe and Africa.

Topics discussed in this conversation include:

*) Some background: 70 years of inventing the future of computing
*) The role of grand challenges to test and advance the world of AI
*) Two major changes in AI: from rules-based to trained, and from training using annotated data to self-supervised training using non-annotated data
*) Factors which have allowed self-supervised training to build large useful models, as opposed to an unstable cascade of mistaken assumptions
*) Foundation models that extend beyond text to other types of structured data, including software code, the reactions of organic chemistry, and data streams generated from industrial processes
*) Moving from relatively shallow general foundation models to models that can hold deep knowledge about particular subjects
*) Identification and removal of bias in foundation models
*) Two methods to create models tailored to the needs of particular enterprises
*) The modification by RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback) of models created by self-supervised learning
*) Examples of new business opportunities enabled by foundation models
*) Three "neuromorphic" methods to significantly improve the energy efficiency of AI systems:  chips with varying precision, memory and computation co-located, and spiking neural networks
*) The vulnerability of existing confidential data to being decrypted in the relatively near future
*) The development and adoption of quantum-safe encryption algorithms
*) What a recent "quantum apocalypse" paper highlights as potential future developments
*) Changing forecasts of the capabilities of quantum computing
*) IBM's attitude toward Artificial General Intelligence and the Turing Test
*) IBM's overall goals with AI, and the selection of future "IBM Grand Challenges" in support of these goals
*) Augmenting the capabilities of scientists to accelerate breakthrough scientific discoveries.

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Selected follow-up reading:
https://researcher.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=zurich-cur
https://www.zurich.ibm.com/st/neuromorphic/
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2022/07/nist-announces-first-four-quantum-resistant-cryptographic-algorithms