Welcome back to Season 6!

We have new mics for this season, so please forgive some teething issues with the sound quality in this episode.

In this edition, Ben and I look into how robots might physically adapt to their surrounding environments. Could we control the world around us with a thought? Why might we need universal basic income? What would omni-use reconfigurable furniture look like? What about producing semiconductors without the extreme engineering they now require?

Enjoy!

Sean’s links:

* Ultraflexible sensors for spinal cords

* Fighting cancer with implanted wireless LEDs

* Self-amputating and infusing robots

* OpenResearch’s study on universal basic income

* Azeem Azhar’s thoughts on UBI (paywall)

* Remote-controlling the minds of mice

Ben’s links:

* Destroying PFAS forever chemicals with tech

* Destroying PFAS forever chemicals with microbes

* “Knitted” furniture and its reconfigurability

* Eavesdropping on whats inside an HDMI cable, without interception

* Potentially the next iteration of semiconductor development?

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We are releasing this episode a couple days after a former US president had an attempt on his life. Without getting political, I believe it emphasizes the gravity of the question that we always try to pose: what is the future that you would like to build?

We wrap up Season 5 by covering breakthroughs in passive insulation and cooling, self-powering blood monitors, and how AI has developed never-before seen bioluminescent proteins. We also cover new solutions to flow algorithms, and how they might underpin all the advancements in the other discoveries.

Please enjoy our final episode for Season 5, we’ll see you again soon!

Sean’s links:

* Blood-powered sensors

* Wearable sweat-powered sensors

* EvolutionaryScale designing new bioluminescent proteins

* Etched building AI model-specific chips

* Radioactive rhino horns

* BONUS (NSFW): lab-grown skin on robots

Ben’s links:

* Breakthroughs in flow algorithms

* Passive heating and cooling with plastics

* Vision Pro and Apple Intelligence

* The long-term benefits of multivitamins

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In this episode, we start the discussion with quantum computing time crystals, contrasted by the bristlecone clock timepiece. After delving into the nature of time, we also cover the benefits and pitfalls of geoengineering, hard but stretchy glassy gels, biodegradable barley starch plastic, X-ray vision, and AI scrubbing emotions from calls. We discuss the tension between differing perspectives about utopias and dystopias, before wrapping up with a new view on mixed reality. Enjoy!

Heads up, this is our penultimate episode for the season.

Sean’s links:

* A clock in the forest

* Softbank canceling out angry customer emotions with AI

* Sticky, stretchy, glassy gels

* Barley start plastic

Ben’s links:

* Time crystal quantum computing

* Geoengineering pitfalls: cooling California but heating up Europe

* More bacteria producing greenhouse gases than thought

* X-ray vision smartphone chips

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As usual this week we try to cover the latest advancements in technology and science, and mapping them against potential ethical dilemmas. Among the inventions we cover, I specifically want to call out China's rifle-equipped robot dogs, and the really, REALLY, unsettling use of human brain tissue in computing. We had a less structured conversation today to focus mainly on these topics, as they’re some of the more dystopian inventions we’ve covered to date. Join in, and see how we try and chart the upside to them.

Sean’s links:

* The terminator dog

* The drone first responder

* The icky biocomputer

* The cement recycling

Ben’s links:

* The soccer robots

* The shipping emissions and climate change conundrum

* Learning to speak Whale

* Ketosis and cognitive function

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This episode, we chat about everything from spy headphones, to synthetic bones, officially-sanctioned election deepfakes, battery tech, mental disorders, to AI dating agents and so much more. The topics begin to converge around how emerging tech is rapidly changing what we understand of our society. What do the concepts of democracy or business mean in this new world? What about how we view fictional icons, known for being at the forefront of tech? Or what we understand of our own health? How do we keep up? All this and more, coming right up.

Sean’s links:

* AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd, by looking at them just once

* The amount of copper needed to build EVs is ‘impossible for mining companies to produce’

* Gelatinous sea animals swim using coordinated jet propulsion.

* Mental disorders may spread in young people's social networks

Ben’s links:

* Synthetic Bones Designed by AI

* Using viruses to kill cancer

* Indian Voters Are Being Bombarded With Millions of Deepfakes. Political Candidates Approve

* Your AI Will Date Other People's AIs

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In this episode, we explore everything from incremental developments, to exponential bounds being made in technology. From a healthier grape juice that could shift dietary habits, to moving data millions of times faster with the same hardware that could redefine how we experience recreation. We also cover the blurred lines between space technology and military hardware, and what might be needed from both to redefine civilian travel. All this and more, coming right up!

Sean’s links:

* Stretchy e-skin

* 45 million times the data transfer speed on the same fiber optics

* Advon, the AI content creation agency proliferating mainstream papers

* Gannett staff’s response to their AI policy

* China’s potential world-first drone carrier

* China’s new rail gun test

* US Senator Chuck Schumer’s AI bill one-pager (contains PDF)

Ben’s links:

* Launch of the world’s largest carbon capture project

* Fresher, tastier, healthier concord grape juice

* World’s biggest 3D printer, making houses in record time

* Solar tech converting greenhouse gases into usable fuel

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This episode, Ben and I cover everything from hardware that can “taste”, gels that patch wounds or make computers, to mutant space bacteria, and magic carpet floors. Our utopias and dystopias range from redefining the ways we create food and understand flavor, to reinventing how an assembly line works, to targeted cancers, total ecosystem destruction, and more. Have a listen: what do you think will come from all of this frontier tech?

Sean’s links:

* Marques Brownlee at the Disney Imaginarium

* E-tongue tastes when wine goes bad

* New mutant bacteria on the space station

* Startup using AI to edit human DNA

Ben’s links:

* “Quantum memory”

* Revolutionary gel-based wound dressings

* Revolutionary gel-based PCBs

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In this episode, Ben and I talk about everything from real-time deepfake romances, to new battery tech, to dumb phones, and AIs predicting human motion and expression. All the topics begin to converge around social isolation, connection, and how emerging tech would look to fight it. Where do we draw the line between human and synthetic emotional connection? And how does that extend into our physical world? And finally, is this something we want, or are we headed there anyway?

Sean’s links:

* AI predicting humanoid locomotion

* The Dumbphone Boom

* The vaccine to end all vaccines?

Ben’s links:

* AI predicting human smiles

* Real-time deepfake romance scams

* Rapid charge/discharge sodium batteries

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In this episode, Ben and I explore a plethora of groundbreaking topics that blur the lines between the fantastical and the tangible. From the advanced manipulation of light that brings us one step closer to real-life 'lightsabers,' to controversy of 'totally not eugenics' that could redefine what we understand about genetic selection and the future of human evolution. We also cover potential ways swarming nanobots could help us rethink what 'infrastructure' means, how it works, and so much more.

Sean’s links:

* Socially swarming nanorobots

* Bending light signals around corners

* Levitating materials (shared with Ben)

Ben’s links:

* Controlling light and making it “hard”

* Gene screening startup that is totally not eugenics

* Quantum breakthroughs in predicting material science suitability

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This week, Ben and I cover AI assistance, gene and chromosomal editing, 3D-printing skin, real-world deepfakes, and much more.

A side note: the 2 AI tools we covered are Devin and OpenInterpreter. Devin’s capabilities have since been debunked quite comprehensively here, while OpenInterpreter 01 made it onstage at Coachella via Grimes’ mechanical spider.

We also mention Neuralink, and must point out that since recording, researchers at UT Austin can now achieve the same effect without any form of surgery!

Sean’s links:

* https://www.openinterpreter.com/01

* https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adfm.202314757

* https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/speaking-without-vocal-cords-ucla-engineering-wearable-tech

Ben’s links:

* https://www.cognition-labs.com/introducing-devin

* https://phys.org/news/2024-03-scientists-technique-human-artificial-chromosomes.html

* https://scitechdaily.com/molecular-majesty-this-is-how-the-bodys-building-blocks-are-made/

* https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/neuralink-shows-first-brain-chip-patient-playing-online-chess-2024-03-21/

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