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.

Selected follow-ups:

• Wendell Wallach Personal Website
• Wendell Wallach - Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
• The Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative
• Nobel Peace Prize Lecture by Christian Lous Lange (1921)
• Thomas Midgley Jr. - Wikipedia
• Montreal Protocol - Wikipedia
• Robot Dog Highlighted at China-Cambodia Joint Military Exercise (video)
• For Our Posterity - essay by Leopold Aschenbrenner
• Campaign by Control/AI against deepfakes

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. 

Selected follow-ups:

• tomorrow.bio
• European Biostasis Foundation
• Dignitas
• The case for brain preservation - Our episode featuring Kenneth Hayworth
• Cryonics, cryocrastination, and the future: changing minds - Our episode featuring Max More
• My next 20+ years towards a moonshot - Blogpost written by Emil Kendziorra in May 2020
• The Cryosphere - A Discord server for discussion of anything cryonics related
• Global Cryonics Summit - Miami, Florida, 20 & 21 July 2024

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.

Selected follow-ups:

• Conscium
• Satalia
• Six categories of application of AI
• Six singularities - TEDx talk by Daniel Hulme
• Professor Mark Solms
• Professor Karl Friston
• A recent paper on different theories of consciousness, by Patrick Butlin, Robert Long, et al
• Professor Nicola Clayton
• Professor Jonathan Birch
• WPP
• The Conscious AI meetup
• AI for organisations - Previous episode featuring Daniel Hulme
• How to use GPT-4 yourself - Previous episode featuring Ted Lappas

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

Those who rush to leverage AI’s power without adequate preparation face difficult blowback, scandals, and could provoke harsh regulatory measures. However, those who have a balanced, informed view on the risks and benefits of AI, and who, with care and knowledge, avoid either complacent optimism or defeatist pessimism, can harness AI’s potential, and tap into an incredible variety of services of an ever-improving quality.

These are some words from the introduction of the new book, “Taming the machine: ethically harness the power of AI”, whose author, Nell Watson, joins us in this episode.

Nell’s many roles include: Chair of IEEE’s Transparency Experts Focus Group, Executive Consultant on philosophical matters for Apple, and President of the European Responsible Artificial Intelligence Office. She also leads several organizations such as EthicsNet.org, which aims to teach machines prosocial behaviours, and CulturalPeace.org, which crafts Geneva Conventions-style rules for cultural conflict.

Selected follow-ups:

• Nell Watson's website
• Taming the Machine - book website
• BodiData (corporation)
• Post Office Horizon scandal: Why hundreds were wrongly prosecuted - BBC News
• Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms - Politico
• Robodebt: Illegal Australian welfare hunt drove people to despair - BBC News
• What is the infected blood scandal and will victims get compensation? - BBC News
• MIRI 2024 Mission and Strategy Update - from the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI)
• British engineering giant Arup revealed as $25 million deepfake scam victim - CNN
• Zersetzung psychological warfare technique - Wikipedia

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

Our guest in this episode grew up in an abandoned town in Tasmania, and is now a researcher and blogger in Berkeley, California. After taking a degree in human ecology and science communication, Katja Grace co-founded AI Impacts, a research organisation trying to answer questions about the future of artificial intelligence.

Since 2016, Katja and her colleagues have published a series of surveys about what AI researchers think about progress on AI. The 2023 Expert Survey on Progress in AI was published this January, comprising responses from 2,778 participants. As far as we know, this is the biggest survey of its kind to date.

Among the highlights are that the time respondents expect it will take to develop an AI with human-level performance dropped between one and five decades since the 2022 survey. So ChatGPT has not gone unnoticed. 

Selected follow-ups:

• AI Impacts
• World Spirit Sock Puppet - Katja's blog
• Survey of 2,778 AI authors: six parts in pictures - from AI Impacts
• OpenAI researcher who resigned over safety concerns joins Anthropic - article  in The Verge about Jan Leike
• MIRI 2024 Mission and Strategy Update - from the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI)
• Future of Humanity Institute 2005-2024: Final Report - by Anders Sandberg (PDF)
• Centre for the Governance of AI
• Reasons for Persons - Article by Katja about Derek Parfit and theories of personal identity
•  OpenAI Says It Has Started Training GPT-4 Successor - article in Forbes

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

Our guest in this episode is Max More. Max is a philosopher, a futurist, and a transhumanist - a term which he coined in 1990, the same year that he legally changed his name from O’Connor to More.

One of the tenets of transhumanism is that technology will allow us to prevent and reverse the aging process, and in the meantime we can preserve our brains with a process known as cryonics. In 1995 Max was awarded a PhD for a thesis on the nature of death, and from 2010 to 2020, he was CEO of Alcor, the world’s biggest cryonics organisation.

Max is firmly optimistic about our future prospects, and wary of any attempts to impede or regulate the development of technologies which can enhance or augment us.

Selected follow-ups:

• Extropic Thoughts - Max More's writing on Substack
• The Biostasis Standard - Max's writings on "the latest in the field of biostasis and cryonics"
• Neophile - Wikipedia
• The Time of the Ice Box - Episode of 1970 BBC children's TV series Timeslip
• Cryostasis Revival: The Recovery of Cryonics Patients  through Nanomedicine - 2022 book by Robert Freitas
• Researchers perform first successful transplant of functional cryopreserved rat kidney - news from the University of Minnesota
• Large Mammal BPF Prize Winning Announcement - news from the Brain Preservation Foundation
• The European Biostasis Foundation
• Alcor Life Extension Foundation

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

Our guest in this episode is Dr. Mark Kotter. Mark is a neurosurgeon, stem cell biologist, and founder or co-founder of three biotech start-up companies that have collectively raised hundreds of millions of pounds: bit.bio, clock.bio, and Meatable.

In addition, Mark still conducts neurosurgeries on patients weekly at the University of Cambridge.

We talk to Mark about all his companies, but we start by discussing Meatable, one of the leading companies in the cultured meat sector. This is an area of technology which should have a far greater impact than most people are aware of, and it’s an area we haven’t covered before in the podcast.

Selected follow-ups:

• Dr Mark Kotter at the University of Cambridge
• Meatable
• bit.bio
• clock.bio
• After 25 years of hype, embryonic stem cells are still waiting for their moment - Article in MIT Technology Review
• The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012
• Moo's Law: An Investor’s Guide to the New Agrarian Revolution - book by Jim Mellon
• What is the climate impact of eating meat and dairy?
• Guidance for businesses on cell-cultivated products and the authorisation process
• Wild mammals make up only a few percent of the world’s mammals - Our World In Data
• BlueRock Therapeutics
• Therapies under development at bit.bio
• Stem Cell Gene Therapy Shows Promise in ALS Trial - from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

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

The public discussion in a number of countries around the world expresses worries about what is called an aging society. These countries anticipate a future with fewer younger people who are active members of the economy, and a growing number of older people who need to be supported by the people still in the workforce. It’s an inversion of the usual demographic pyramid, with less at the bottom, and more at the top.

However, our guest in this episode recommends a different framing of the future – not as an aging society, but as a longevity society, or even an evergreen society. He is Andrew Scott, Professor of Economics at the London Business School. His other roles include being a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and a consulting scholar at Stanford University’s Center on Longevity.

Andrew’s latest book is entitled “The Longevity Imperative: Building a Better Society for Healthier, Longer Lives”. Commendations for the book include this from the political economist Daron Acemoglu, “A must-read book with an important message and many lessons”, and this from the historian Niall Ferguson, “Persuasive, uplifting and wise”. 

Selected follow-ups:

• Personal website of Andrew Scott
• Andrew Scott at the London Business School
• The book The Longevity Imperative: How to Build a Healthier and More Productive Society to Support Our Longer Lives
• Longevity, the 56 trillion dollar opportunity, with Andrew Scott - episode 40 in this series
• Population Pyramids of the World from 1950 to 2100
• Thomas Robert Malthus - Wikipedia
• DALYs (Disability-adjusted life years) and QALYs (Quality-adjusted life years) - Wikipedia
• VSL (Value of Statistical Life) - Wikipedia
• The economic value of targeting aging - paper in Nature Aging, co-authored by Andrew Scott, Martin Ellison, and David Sinclair
• A great-grandfather from Merseyside has become the world's oldest living man - BBC, 5th April 2024

Related quotations:

• Aging is "...revealed and made manifest only by the most unnatural experiment of prolonging an animal's life by sheltering it from the hazards of its ordinary existence" - Peter Medawar, 1951
• "To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular, and, therefore, so much less natural than the others; ’tis the last and extremest sort of dying: and the more remote, the less to be hoped for" - Michel de Montaigne, 1580

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

In this episode we return to the subject of whether AIs will become conscious, or, to use a word from the title of the latest book from our guest today, whether AIs will become sentient.

Our guest is Nicholas Humphrey, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at London School of Economics, and Bye Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge. His latest book is “Sentience: the invention of consciousness”, and it explores the emergence and role of consciousness from a variety of perspectives.

The book draws together insights from the more than fifty years Nick has been studying the evolution of intelligence and consciousness. He was the first person to demonstrate the existence of “blindsight” after brain damage in monkeys, studied mountain gorillas with Dian Fossey in Rwanda, originated the theory of the “social function of intellect”, and has investigated the evolutionary background of religion, art, healing, death-awareness, and suicide. Among his other awards are the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, the Pufendorf Medal, and the International Mind and Brain Prize.

The conversation starts with some reflections on the differences between the views of our guest and his long-time philosophical friend Daniel Dennett, who had died shortly before the recording took place.

Selected follow-ups:

• The website of Nicholas Humphrey
• The book Sentience: The Invention of Consciousness
• How did consciousness evolve? - Recording of talk at the Royal Institution
• The book Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett
• Penrose triangle (article contains "real impossible triangles")
• Keith Frankish (philosopher of mind)
• The psychonic theory of consciousness - a theory included in the 1929 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Lawrence (Larry) Weiskrantz - the supervisor of Nicholas Humphrey
• Blindside patient 'TN'
• The Tin Men by Michael Frayn
• What’s it like to be an AI: Anil Seth on London Futurists Podcast
• Joe Simpson (mountaineer)
• The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness
• Scientific Declaration on Insect Sentience and Welfare
• Rupert Sheldrake
• Alternative Natural Philosophy Association (ANPA)

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

Our topic in this episode is progress with ending aging. Our guest is the person who literally wrote the book on that subject, namely the book, “Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime”. He is Aubrey de Grey, who describes himself in his Twitter biography as “spearheading the global crusade to defeat aging”.

In pursuit of that objective, Aubrey co-founded the Methuselah Foundation in 2003, the SENS Research Foundation in 2009, and the LEV Foundation, that is the Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation, in 2022, where he serves as President and Chief Science Officer.

Full disclosure: David also has a role on the executive management team of LEV Foundation, but for this recording he was wearing his hat as co-host of the London Futurists Podcast.

The conversation opens with this question: "When people are asked about ending aging, they often say the idea sounds nice, but they see no evidence for any actual progress toward ending aging in humans. They say that they’ve heard talk about that subject for years, or even decades, but wonder when all that talk is going to result in people actually living significantly longer. How do you respond?"

Selected follow-ups:

• Aubrey de Grey on X (Twitter)
• The book Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime
• The Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV) Foundation
• The SENS paradigm for ending aging , contrasted with the "Hallmarks of Aging" - a 2023 article in Rejuvenation Research
• Progress reports from the current RMR project
• The plan for RMR 2
• The RAID (Rodent Aging Interventions Database) analysis that guided the design of RMR 1 and 2
• Longevity Summit Dublin (LSD): 13-16 June 2024
• Unblocking the Brain’s Drains to Fight Alzheimer’s - Doug Ethell of Leucadia Therapeutics at LSD 2023 (explains the possible role of the cribriform plate)
• Targeting Telomeres to Clear Cancer – Vlad Vitoc of MAIA Biotechnology at LSD 2023
• How to Run a Lifespan Study of 1,000 Mice - Danique Wortel of Ichor Life Sciences at LSD 2023
• XPrize Healthspan
• The Dublin Longevity Declaration ("DLD")

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