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.

Selected follow-ups:

• Pedro Domingos - University of Washington
• Previous London Futurists Podcast episode featuring Pedro Domingos
• 2040: A Silicon Valley Satire
• The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World
• The Bonfire of the Vanities
• Ron Howard
• Mike Judge
• Martin Scorsese
• Pandora’s Brain
• Transcendence
• Future of Life Institute moratorium open letter
• OpenAI working on new reasoning technology under code name ‘Strawberry’
• Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach - by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig
• Google's AI reasons its way around the London Underground - Nature
• Conscium
• Is LaMDA Sentient? — an Interview - by Blake Lemoine
• Could a Large Language Model be Conscious? - Talk by David Chalmers at NeurIPS 2022
• Jeremy Bentham
• The Extended Phenotype - 1982 book by Richard Dawkins
• Clarion West: Workshops for people who are serious about writing

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.

Selected follow-ups:

• James Ball (personal website)
• The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World - book by James Ball
• Guardian and Washington Post win Pulitzer prize for NSA revelations
• Meme - as described by Richard Dawkins
• Dreyfus affair
• Blood libel
• Future Shock - book by Alvin and Heidi Toffler
• How The Gulf Of Tonkin Incident Sparked The Vietnam War
• Why Narcissists Love Conspiracy Theories
• Nigel Farage - UK politician 
• WarGames - 1983 movie
• Gish gallop - rhetorical technique
• Dominic Cummings has admitted the Leave campaign won by lying
• Reality check: how do Farage’s claims on immigration, economy and crime hold up?
• Facts don’t change minds – and there’s data to prove it

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".

Selected follow-ups:

• The Futurists
• Brett King
• Robert Tercek
• Episode of The Futurists featuring David and Calum
• Neptune's Brood - Wikipedia article on the novel by Charles Stross
• Jobs lost, jobs gained: What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages - McKinsey Global Institute
• Wirecutter - New York Times product review site
• Could AI create a one-person unicorn? Sam Altman thinks so - Fortune
• The book The Rise of Technosocialism
• Professor Richard Petty
• Comparison of economic growth, Europe vs. USA - Centre for European Reform
• LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman wants Kamala Harris, if elected, to replace Lina Khan as head of the Federal Trade Commission - MSNBC

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:

• The case for brain preservation, with Kenneth Hayworth
• Cryonics, cryocrastination, and the future: changing minds, with Max More
• Stop cryocrastinating! with Emil Kendziorra

Additional selected follow-ups:

• Oregon Brain Preservation
• The costs of the services provided by Oregon Brain Preservation
• Focused Ultrasound: A Promising Tool for Cryonics - Tomorrow Bio
• Investigation of Electromagnetic Resonance Rewarming Enhanced by Magnetic Nanoparticles for Cryopreservation - Langmuir
• Pre-epithelialized cryopreserved tracheal allograft for neo-trachea flap engineering - Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology
• Aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation by Robert McIntyre and Gregory Fahy - Cryobiology
• Oregon's Death with Dignity Act
• 14-year-old girl who died of cancer wins right to be cryogenically frozen - The Guardian

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.

Selected follow-ups:

• Women for Tech UAE
• Trivandi appoints Holly Joint
• Trivandi - "Creating Events and Venues, Better"
• With a Few Bits of Data, Researchers Identify ‘Anonymous’ People - New York Times
• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism - Shoshana Zuboff
• Rankings out of 142 cities - Smart City Observatory (Abu Dhabi ranked #10 in 2024)
• Women in Tech: Time to close the gender gap - A PwC research report
• Why are so many big tech whistleblowers women? - The Conversation
• Falcon - the Arabic language LLM
• Collapse of Silicon Valley Bank - Wikipedia

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.

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