Sideways returns with seven new stories of seeing the world differently and the ideas that shape our lives. Stories about everything from the ethics of using AI to simulate conversations with the dead to viewing decay as a vehicle for rebirth. Listen to the eleventh series of Sideways first on BBC Sounds.

Presenter: Matthew Syed

Geoffrey Hinton's work laid the foundation for today's artificial intelligence systems. His research on neural networks has paved the way for current AI systems like ChatGPT.

In artificial intelligence, neural networks are systems that are similar to the human brain in the way they learn and process information. They enable artificial intelligence to learn from experience, as human beings would.

But Geoffrey Hinton has warned that machines could one day outsmart humans. He has even warned that autonomous weapons could be active on the battlefields of the future. In this final episode of 25 Years of the 21st Century, Matthew Syed interviews Professor Hinton.

Historian and author Margaret MacMillan and Baroness Joanna Shields also join Matthew in discussion. Baroness Shields has been working in the field of technology for forty years, holding senior roles at both Google and Facebook. She was the UK’s first Minister for Internet Safety and Security. She’s also a Conservative life peer in the House of Lords. Does she agree with Geoffrey Hinton's concerns for the future?

For 25 Years of the 21st Century, is this the age of artificial intelligence?

Production team

Archive

As we swipe to find love and consult chatbot therapists, Matthew Syed asks how technology has altered the way we approach dating, friendship and community.

It’s not all technology, though. Key changes in social trends, medical innovations, demography and economic factors have also played a part in how people live. How have relationships changed in the past 25 years?

Contributors

Production team

Archive

Is this the age of outsourcing?

This is not a show about call centres in India. Rather, it's a look at a much deeper shift in who we are, how we think, and where value is created. In some ways, it's the most dizzying and philosophical shift of all.

In this episode, we attempt to understand outsourcing at the macro level - how corporations have outsourced so much that they’ve become hollow. And we look at the micro level - how we've outsourced our minds and memories to technology.

Contributors

Production team

Archive

Have we lost faith in institutions, politicians - and even money?

Some people say there is an onslaught of misinformation and a battle for truth. So who do we trust now?

In this series, we’re remembering some of the big events of this century and asking how they’re shaping us.

Matthew is joined by Margaret MacMillan a historian and author, Rachel Botsman the author of three books on trust and Helen Margetts, a Professor of Society and the Internet at the University of Oxford.

Production team

Archive

In this series, we’re remembering some of the major events of this century and asking how they’re shaping us. This programme is all about war and conflict: from the events of September 11th 2001, to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. We're also looking at artificial intelligence on the battlefield. Where might that take us?

Matthew is joined by historian and writer Margaret MacMillan, former Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Nick Carter and author, Professor Anthony King.

Production team

Archive

Matthew Syed asks what it means to be distracted in a media world vying for our attention.

In this final episode, he considers where our media consumption might be headed. Many are concerned about smartphone addiction and a disintegration of public discourse, but others see a brighter future and our current times as a turning point to a world where the capacities of technology are used to benefit of society.

Matthew speaks to a former tech engineer who has become a philosopher and activist on attention, a historian who believes that our current era has many precedents, a psychologist who is wary of headlines about collapsed attention spans and a behavioural economist who can see a way that our society will adapt to the digital world.

Contributors:

James Williams, author of Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy

Presenter: Matthew Syed

Matthew Syed asks what it means to be distracted in a media world vying for our attention.

In this episode Matthew traces the inexorable rise of shortform video and investigates its success. He asks what the increasing popularity of this type of media might mean for our attention and finds out about the people using for purposes that may have surprised Neil Postman.

Apps such as Tik Tok, Youtube and Snapchat are ubiquitous and for many have become the chief way that they consume media. What does watching shorter videos mean for the content, and how do these apps change our habits and possibly, our brains?

The popularity of this medium has driven traditional institutions that are concerned with public affairs to embrace shortform video. So what's the result? Matthew finds out.

Contributors:

Dr Zoetanya Sujon, University of the Arts London

Presenter: Matthew Syed

Matthew Syed asks what it means to be distracted in a media world vying for our attention.

In this episode, Matthew analyses the medium through which we consume so much our media, the smartphone, and asks how whether it changes the nature of how we read, watch and interpret the world around us.

Matthew looks into the culture of smartphone use around the world and finds out what we can interpret from the growing use of the devices, particularly among younger generations. He looks into the technological advancements in the smartphone that have driven the most change, and considers how information consumption on a phone changes our approach to attention as opposed to the television or a book.

Contributors:

Gloria Mark, Chancellor's Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine and author of Attention Span: Finding Focus for a Fulfilling Life

Presenter: Matthew Syed

Matthew Syed asks what it means to be distracted in a media world vying for our attention.

In this episode, Matthew looks into history to uncover different approaches to focus. He finds out where the idea of 'attention' came from, whether there has always been a fear that humanity's ability to focus was declining, and what the historical relationship of technology to distraction has been.

He hears from the historian of science D Graham Burnett. Burnett has explored different philosophies of attention across the ages and is an advocate for a change in behaviours regarding our attention today. Professor Nilli Lavie, of University College London's Attention Research Laboratory, provides an insight into modern scientific views of attention.

Matthew looks for answers in a community renowned for their ability to focus...monks. Historian Jamie Kreiner has uncovered how early Christian monks thought about distraction in her book 'The Wandering Mind'. Jamie reveals that there is more to connect the monks of the first millennia with our technological world today than we might think.

Presenter: Matthew Syed