Synthetic Society

Kerryn Gammie and Tom Ascott discuss how archaic, colonial power structures have survived and turned into neo-colonialism, and how those structures continue to be pervasive online. 

The pair reflect on ideas of justice, identity and equality and how we can bring these ideas to the world of business to make our work lives more equitable.

Ben Decker, Founder and CEO of Memetica, talks to host Tom Ascott about the perils of misinformation on social media, if the Taliban should be allowed to have a Twitter account, and what the future of content moderation looks like.

Tom Ascott speaks to Giedrimas Jeglinskas, NATO Assistant Secretary General, and former Vice-Minister of Defence of Lithuania.

The pair discuss what role NATO plays in information ecosystems and how NATO can help combat disinformation, as well as how diversity and inclusion can generate new and creative solutions and the importance of diversity in supply chains.

Can we make our data stronger, safer, and more secure by pooling it together? This week Tom Ascott speaks to Astha Kapoor, Co-Founder and Director of the AAPTI Institute in India. 

They discuss how new ideas of data unions, data co-ops and data stewardship are providing a model for how citizens can come together and collectively bargain with the state and with private companies in order to get better services.

What is time? This week Tom talks to Emily Thomas, a philosopher of time and travel, about how time and technology interact.  They discuss how the timeline affects how we perceive time, if going on Twitter is like going on holiday, and the different ways technology might let us have experiences outside of time. 

The pair also give an overview of the philosophy of C.D. Broad and the ideas of eternalism versus growing block theory and the idea of substantivalism and relationism.

This week Tom explores how robotics and AI is changing our moral beliefs and practices with John Danaher.

John is a Senior Lecturer at NUI Galway School of Law, and philosopher behind Philosophical Disquisitions, a blog, and a podcast that focuses on the ethical and legal nexus of technology and philosophy.

This episode Tom speaks to Areeq Chowdhury, the founder and director of WebRoots Democracy. WebRoots was a think tank focused on progressive and inclusive technology policy which ran for almost seven years. 

The pair discuss digital voting, facial recognition software and if social media companies should pay a user-based tax to fund digital literacy and anti-discrimination initiatives.

As the ways in which we can interact virtually increase, so do the ways that we can become victims of harassment. In video games, we need to design systems that help fight problematic and toxic behavior while still supporting a competitive atmosphere.

In this episode, Tom Ascott talks to Lucy Sparrow, a Ph.D. candidate with the Human-Computer Interaction Group (HCIG) at the University of Melbourne.

Should we treat characters in games the same way we treat real people? Is it ethical to run over someone over in Grand Theft Auto? And what about us, does it say something about our moral character if we spend all day in our underwear playing games?

This week Tom Ascott speaks to Sebastian Ostritsch, Assistant Professor at Stuttgart University, about ethics in video games.

What would a world look like if it was made by AI?

This week Mitchell Baxter, Director at Lazy Monday Games, explains how AI helps in designing video games. He and host Tom Ascott talk about where the technology is now, the challenges in balancing unique and bespoke art with generative assets, and the assistance that new technology offers to artists and designers.