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PODCAST

London Futurists

London Futurists

Anticipating and managing exponential impact - hosts David Wood and Calum ChaceCalum Chace is a sought-after keynote speaker and best-selling writer on artificial intelligence. He focuses on the medium- and long-term impact of AI on all of us, our societies and our economies. He advises companies and governments on AI policy.His non-fiction books on AI are Surviving AI, about superintelligence, and The Economic Singularity, about the future of jobs. Both are now in their third editions.He also wrote

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All Episodes

34:34

The global energy transition: an optimistic...

London Futurists ·

2024/12/16

Our guest in this episode is Amory Lovins, a distinguished environmental scientist, and co-founder of RMI, which he co-founded in 1982 as Rocky Mountain Institute. It’s what he calls a think do and scale tank, with 700 people in 62 countries, and a budget of well over $100m a year.For over five decades, Amory has championed innovative approaches to energy systems, advocating for a world where energy services are delivered with least cost and least impact. He has advised all manner of governme...

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47:08

Building brain-like AIs, with Alexander Ororbia

London Futurists ·

2024/12/09

Some people say that all that’s necessary to improve the capabilities of AI is to scale up existing systems. That is, to use more training data, to have larger models with more parameters in them, and more computer chips to crunch through the training data. However, in this episode, we’ll be hearing from a computer scientist who thinks there are many other options for improving AI. He is Alexander Ororbia, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York State, where he direct...

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41:23

To sidestep death, preserve your connectome, with...

London Futurists ·

2024/11/18

In David's life so far, he has read literally hundreds of books about the future. Yet none has had such a provocative title as this: “The future loves you: How and why we should abolish death”. That’s the title of the book written by the guest in this episode, Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston. Ariel is a neuroscientist, and a Research Fellow at Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia.One of the key ideas in Ariel’s book is that so long as your connectome – the full set of the synapses in your bra...

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41:24

Insights from 15 years leading the self-driving...

London Futurists ·

2024/11/05

Our guest in this episode is Sterling Anderson, a pioneer of self-driving vehicles. With a masters degree and a PhD from MIT, Sterling led the development and launch of the Tesla Model X, and then led the team that delivered Tesla Autopilot. In 2017 he co-founded Aurora, along with Chris Urmson, who was a founder and CTO of Google’s self-driving car project, which is now Waymo, and also Drew Bagnell, who co-founded and led Uber’s self-driving team.Aurora is concentrating on automating long-di...

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46:49

The race for AI supremacy, with Parmy Olson

London Futurists ·

2024/10/29

Our guest in this episode is Parmy Olson, a columnist for Bloomberg covering technology. Parmy has previously been a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and for Forbes. Her first book, “We Are Anonymous”, shed fascinating light on what the subtitle calls “the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency”.But her most recent book illuminates a set of high-stakes relations with potentially even bigger consequences for human wellbeing. The title is “Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT...

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40:46

A narrow path to a good future with AI, with Andrea...

London Futurists ·

2024/10/21

Our guest in this episode is Andrea Miotti, the founder and executive director of ControlAI. On their website, ControlAI have the tagline, “Fighting to keep humanity in control”. Control over what, you might ask. The website answers: control deepfakes, control scaling, control foundation models, and, yes, control AI.The latest project from ControlAI is called “A Narrow Path”, which is a comprehensive policy plan split into three phases: Safety, Stability, and Flourishing. To be clear, the env...

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35:30

Gen AI cuts costs by 30%: lessons from a leading law...

London Futurists ·

2024/10/11

Our guest in this episode is David Wakeling, a partner at A&O Shearman, which became the world’s third largest law firm in May, thanks to the merger of Allen and Overy, a UK “magic circle” firm, with Shearman & Sterling of New York.David heads up a team within the firm called the Markets Innovation Group (MIG), which consists of lawyers, developers and technologists, and is seeking to disrupt the legal industry. He also leads the firm's AI Advisory practice, through which the firm is ...

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38:44

Climate change and populism: Grounds for optimism?...

London Futurists ·

2024/09/26

Our guest in this episode is Matt Burgess. Matt is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wyoming, where he moved this year after six years at the University of Boulder, Colorado. He has specialised in the economics of climate change.Calum met Matt at a recent event in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and knows from their conversations then that Matt has also thought deeply about the impact of social media, the causes of populism, and many other subjects.Selected follow-ups:Matt Burgess at the Uni...

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45:03

Rejuvenation biotech - progress and potential, with...

London Futurists ·

2024/09/18

Our guest in this episode is Karl Pfleger. Karl is an angel investor in rejuvenation biotech startups, and is also known for creating and maintaining the website Aging Biotech Info. That website describes itself as “Structured info about aging and longevity”, and has the declared mission statement, “Everything important in the field (outside of academia), organized.”Previously, Karl worked at Google from 2002 to 2013, as a research scientist and data analyst, applying AI and machine learning ...

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49:23

ChatGPT runs for president, with Pedro Domingos

London Futurists ·

2024/09/01

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 re...

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39:31

The rise of digital pandemics, with James Ball

London Futurists ·

2024/08/20

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 ...

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55:24

Thinking more athletically about the future, with...

London Futurists ·

2024/08/12

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 d...

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37:55

The low-cost future of preserving brains, with Jordan...

London Futurists ·

2024/08/02

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 rece...

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35:36

Surveillance and diversity: surprising insights from...

London Futurists ·

2024/07/25

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 ...

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53:53

The double-edged sword of technology, with Wendell...

London Futurists ·

2024/07/19

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...

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40:05

Stop cryocrastinating! with Emil Kendziorra

London Futurists ·

2024/07/12

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 compan...

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42:01

Introducing Conscium, with Daniel Hulme and Ted Lappas

London Futurists ·

2024/07/01

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 ven...

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45:07

Taming the Machine, with Nell Watson

London Futurists ·

2024/06/20

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 ...

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33:56

AI Impacts Survey - The key implications, with Katja...

London Futurists ·

2024/06/13

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 p...

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50:15

Cryonics, cryocrastination, and the future: changing...

London Futurists ·

2024/06/05

Our guest in this episode is Max More. Max is a philosopher, a futurist, and a transhumanist - a term which he coined in 1990, the same year that he legally changed his name from O’Connor to More.One of the tenets of transhumanism is that technology will allow us to prevent and reverse the aging process, and in the meantime we can preserve our brains with a process known as cryonics. In 1995 Max was awarded a PhD for a thesis on the nature of death, and from 2010 to 2020, he was CEO of Alcor,...

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123 results

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