We release this show while votes are being counted from the 2020 US General Election.

Four years ago, we published one of the first Augmented City shows in the week following the election of Donald Trump. That show tried to illustrate the decisive role played by social media in the 2016 contest [see below for a link]. This time, we look at how social media and AI have matured as potent political tools and ask the question: how well will democratic societies weather the onslaught of fake news and other forms of digital content designed to nudge people in a particular ideological direction?

The 2020 election will force a reckoning at all levels of society and the technology industry about the impact of social media and AI on our democratic processes. One of the most important intellectual hurdles will be a realization that the Internet and social media are now mature infrastructures.

If Andrew Ng is right that AI (even social media) is the new electricity, we must recognize that digital pollution is as real as its physical counterpart. "These are early days" is an oft-used phrase that must be retired.

From 2016: https://soundcloud.com/the-augmented-city/augmented-city-project-ai-elections

Professor Ian Angell is one of the most influential and controversial thinkers about the global consequences of information technology. Formerly the chair of the Department of Information Systems at the London School of Economics, Prof. Angell wrote a book called "The New Barbarian Manifesto", which published on January 1, 2000. I know the book because Ian and I bounced around certain ideas within it while I was a student at the LSE. We take a look at the ideas of Empire and Barbarians from a socio-political viewpoint in the context of technology and the breaking apart of the Post WWII international order. We don't agree on everything and neither should you. But given current times, many of the warnings from 20 years ago ring terribly true.

AC interviewed Dr. Steven Schkolne about his new book, "Living with Frankenstein: The History and Destiny of Machine Consciousness". We cover some of the scientific, philosophical and humanistic ideas and controversies about consciousness and what it means for machines to exhibit similar attributes. The rubber will meet the road with digital humans, 3D avatars that combine Hollywood quality realism on the front-end with AI in the back. Even if these creations pass the classic Turing Test, does it mean they're actually intelligent and/or conscious or does it mean we need a new test for both?

This interview builds on our continuing work on digital humans, the signature example of merging culture & code.

John speaks with Natalie Monbiot of Hour One, a NYC-based company that develops AI-powered synthetic characters for retail and other types of customer service. This interview is part of our ongoing series about the blurring lines between real and imaginary people we meet online.

AC speaks with Christina Heller, CEO of Metastage, one of LA's premier creative technology service providers. Christina is an expert on volumetric capture, the ability to capture a 3D media asset from a human performance. We go over the fundamentals of volumetric as well as how it's being applied in Hollywood for movies and for music.

As an award winner singer and musician, Laura Rizzotto has performed on numerous stages --- including the inside of a 16oz glass of beer. A beer glass is a tight squeeze for a flesh and blood human but a cinch for a 3D hologram. 3D human performance capture has become common practice for producing high-end digital media. Scores of articles and interviews cover the technical and business side of this mash-up of film making and computer science. But what does this rapidly maturing platform mean for performers? What is unique and what stays the same? We sit down with professional musician and Eurovision winner Laura Rizzotto to explore the artist's perspective of 3D performance capture.

A conversation with Darren Hendler of Digital Domain about lifelike 3D avatars with an AI back-end ("Digital Humans"). If you've seen movies like Marvels Avengers: Infinity War, Spiderman, Beauty and the Beast, Deadpool, Titanic and many others, you've experienced some of Digital Domain and Darren's visual effects work. Now, many of the technologies and techniques honed for bringing digital characters to the big screen are emerging in other sectors like healthcare and education as the next generation of virtual assistants. What happens when you merge Hollywood-level special effects with conversational AI? This interview is one of several we're producing around this topic.

Jonathan Blanco started TF Blockchain to provide a networking and education platform for the blockchain community of practice in Seattle and six other cities. We spoke with Jonathan about TF's origin story plus how blockchain principles and technology are changing industries and services well beyond the financial sector. If you're looking for a map of the blockchain ecosystem and where to plug into it, this is your episode.

During CES, we spoke with John Canning, a senior executive at Digital Domain, one of Hollywood's top-tier visual effects (VFX) creative development studios. Examples of DD's work include the villainous Titan Thanos from Marvel's Avenger film series. Brought alive on the screen by actor Josh Brolin and the Digital Domain VFX team, Thanos is a fusion of human performance & creativity, AI smarts, and cloud computing scale. Now, many of the technologies and techniques used to develop a character like Thanos are being re-imagined for platforms beyond film and television --- holograms, AR/VR, immersive media for indoor and outdoor locations. John's job is to figure out how to make that jump from a few screens to ubiquitous screens, or no screens at all.

On the floor at CES 2020, John spoke with Matt Holvey from Bell about Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and new directions for an 80 year old aviation company. The conversation touched on mass-market, electric powered vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, regulatory issues, the path to autonomous flight operations, and what is required to build an ecosystem around urban air travel.