x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

FT Tech Tonic

Financial Times

We are in the midst of a digital revolution, where the line between our physical world and cyberspace is blurring. Tech Tonic is the show that investigates the promises and perils of this new technological age. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

technology entrepreneurship

All Episodes

26:16

China's race to tech supremacy: Shenzhen speed

FT Tech Tonic ·

2024/05/14

How did China go from tech imitator to innovator? The FT’s James Kynge reports from Shenzhen, known as China’s Silicon Valley, where he explores the city’s vast electronics markets with inventor Noah Zerkin, an American who’s based himself in China, visits robot start-up Youibot and hears from DJI about how it became the world’s biggest drone manufacturer. Plus, Matt Sheehan, a China watcher focused on technology at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Qi Zhou, a venture capitalist

en

1:07

Coming soon: China, the new tech superpower

FT Tech Tonic ·

2024/05/07

In a new season of Tech Tonic, longtime FT China reporter James Kynge travels around the world to see how China is pushing towards tech supremacy. Will China be able to get an edge in crucial technological areas? What does China’s attempt to leapfrog the west look like on the ground? A six-part series looking at China’s tech industry.Presented by James Kynge. Edwin Lane is the senior producer. The producer is Josh Gabert-Doyon. Executive producer is Manuela Saragosa. Sound design by Breen Turner and

en

1:11

Introducing: Swamp Notes from The FT News Briefing

FT Tech Tonic ·

2024/02/05

If you have questions about this year's US presidential election, we have answers.Swamp Notes is a new podcast from the FT News Briefing. Listen every Saturday morning as our journalists analyse and discuss the latest happenings in US politics. We’ll go beyond the horse race for the White House and offer a global perspective on the election.You can subscribe to Swamp Notes here or wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

en

1:57

Introducing Untold: The Retreat

FT Tech Tonic ·

2024/01/12

Introducing Untold, a new podcast from the special investigations team at the Financial Times. In its first series, The Retreat, host Madison Marriage examines the world of the Goenka network, which promotes a type of intensive meditation known as Vipassana. Thousands of people go on Goenka retreats every year. People rave about them. But some people go to these meditation retreats, and they suffer. They might feel a deep sense of terror, or a break with reality. And on the other side, they’re not

en

26:27

Superintelligent AI: Conscious Machines

FT Tech Tonic ·

2023/12/12

As the race to human-level AI accelerates, researchers are increasingly confronted with the question of what it would mean to develop conscious AI. Will sentience emerge naturally from powerfully intelligent artificial systems? Or is consciousness incompatible with disembodied AI? As some human users become more attached to romantic chatbots, will the moral questions surrounding conscious AI become more pressing? In the final episode of our series on artificial general intelligence, the FT’s John

en

25:59

Superintelligent AI: Transhumanism etc.

FT Tech Tonic ·

2023/12/05

What are the ideas driving the pursuit of human-level AI? In the penultimate episode of this Tech Tonic series, hosts Madhumita Murgia and John Thornhill look at some of the futuristic objectives that are at the centre of the AI industry’s quest for superintelligence and hear about the Extropians, a surprisingly influential group of futurists from the early 1990s. Anders Sandberg, senior research fellow at Oxford university's Future of Humanity Institute, sets out some of the ideas developed in the

en

28:36

Superintelligent AI: can chatbots think?

FT Tech Tonic ·

2023/11/28

Are generative AI systems such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT really intelligent? Large language models such as GPT 4 appear to use human-level cognitive abilities when they engage in legal reasoning, write essays or solve complex problems. Hosts John Thornhill and Madhumita Murgia speak to Emily Bender, professor of computational linguistics at the University of Washington, to find out what’s really happening under the hood, and also hear from Pablo Arredondo of CaseText, which develops AI tools for lawyers;

en

24:48

Superintelligent AI: The Utopians

FT Tech Tonic ·

2023/11/21

If even AI companies are fretting about the existential threat that human-level AI poses, why are they building these machines in the first place? And as they press ahead, a debate is raging about how we regulate this emergent sector to keep it under control. In the second episode of a new, five-part series of Tech Tonic, FT journalists Madhumita Murgia and John Thornhill hear from Anthropic’s co-founder, Jack Clark; Dan Hendrycks, founder of the Center for AI Safety; Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist

en

28:47

Superintelligent AI: The Doomers

FT Tech Tonic ·

2023/11/14

In the first episode of a new, five-part series of Tech Tonic, FT journalists Madhumita Murgia and John Thornhill ask how close we are to building human-level artificial intelligence and whether ‘superintelligent’ AI poses an existential risk to humanity. John and Madhu speak to Yoshua Bengio, a pioneer of generative AI, who is concerned, and to his colleague Yann LeCun, now head of AI at Meta, who isn’t. Plus, they hear from Eliezer Yudkowsky, research lead at the Machine Intelligence Research

en

4:10

Coming soon: Superintelligent AI

FT Tech Tonic ·

2023/10/31

In a new series of Tech Tonic, FT journalists Madhumita Murgia and John Thornhill look at the concerns around the rise of artificial intelligence. Will superintelligent AI bring existential risk, or a new renaissance? Would it be ethical to build conscious AI? How intelligent are these machines anyway? The new season of Tech Tonic from the Financial Times, drops mid-November.Presented by Madhumita Murgia and John Thornhill. Senior producer is Edwin Lane and producer Josh Gabert-Doyon. Executive

en

24:50

Can AI help us speak to animals? Part two

FT Tech Tonic ·

2023/09/19

A hardware revolution in recording devices and a software revolution in artificial intelligence has convinced some scientists that humans will eventually be able to ‘translate’ animal and even plant sounds into human language. But what would be the consequences of humans learning to ‘speak whale’, chat with bats or converse with elephants? The FT’s innovation editor John Thornhill and producer Persis Love explore the ethics of potential human-to-animal communication.Presented by John Thornhill,

en

29:12

Can AI help us speak to animals? Part one

FT Tech Tonic ·

2023/09/19

A hardware revolution in recording devices and a software revolution in artificial intelligence is enabling researchers to listen in to all kinds of conversations outside the human hearing range, a field known as bioacoustics. Some scientists now believe these developments will also allow us to ‘translate’ animal sounds into human language. In a new season of Tech Tonic, FT innovation editor John Thornhill and series producer Persis Love ask whether we’re moving closer to being able to ‘speak whale’

en

32:42

Can AI help us speak to animals? Karen Bakker interview

FT Tech Tonic ·

2023/09/19

The Canadian scientist and author Karen Bakker, who died unexpectedly in August this year, was a leading voice in the bioacoustic research community. Her 2022 book, The Sounds of Life, explained how it might one day be possible to create a kind of Google Translate for animals and was the inspiration behind this Tech Tonic series. This episode contains the full interview that we recorded with her. We are posting it as a tribute to her remarkable work.Free links:Google Translate for the zoo? How

en

1:09

Coming soon: Can AI help us speak to animals?

FT Tech Tonic ·

2023/09/12

Some scientists believe that rapid advances in artificial intelligence may also hold the key to decoding animal sounds, allowing us to ‘translate’ them into human language. In a new season of Tech Tonic, FT innovation editor John Thornhill and series producer Persis Love explore how the same technology that powers ChatGPT is being applied to research in animal communication. Could we one day learn to ‘speak whale’ or even chat with bats? And if so, can we trust ourselves to do so

en

29:47

The quantum revolution: Live at Founders Forum

FT Tech Tonic ·

2023/08/22

A bonus episode to go with our Quantum Revolution season. The FT’s John Thornhill and Madhumita Murgia host a panel of experts at the Founders Forum conference, discussing the promise of quantum computing and the state of the quantum industry today. Featuring Steve Brierley, founder andchief executiveof Riverlane, a company building the algorithms and software for quantum computers; Ilana Wisby, CEO of Oxford Quantum Circuits, a company building commercially available quantum computers; and Hermann

en

1:44

Introducing: The Russian Banker

FT Tech Tonic ·

2023/08/18

Who is Sergei Leontiev? To the US asylum system, he’s an exiled Russian banker who was persecuted by the state and forced to flee. To Russia, he’ssaid to beresponsible for massive fraud. On The Russian Banker, a new series from the Financial Times, reporters Courtney Weaver and Stefania Palma try to uncover the truth, and find a story that tells us about Russia today and how people in the west build stories about who’s good and who’s bad. The Russian Banker is a special series that will run on the

en

21:17

Peak social media: The future

FT Tech Tonic ·

2023/08/01

In the final episode of this Tech Tonic season, FT correspondents weigh in on the trends that will determine the future of social media. From Meta’s Threads to artificial intelligence, we ask how platforms will look and feel in years to come. The FT’s deputy Lex editor, host Elaine Moore, speaks with social media reporter Cristina Criddle, global technology correspondent Tim Bradshaw and San Francisco-based tech reporter Hannah Murphy. Plus, we hear from Evan Henshaw-Plath, one of the creators of

en

26:00

Peak social media: Building better platforms

FT Tech Tonic ·

2023/07/25

Can we get rid of the bad bits of socialmedia andkeep the good? Is it possible to create a more positive social media experience than the one we get from the platforms that dominate the landscape today? In this episode, Elaine Moore asks what the social media platforms of the future should look like, and whether platforms designed for smaller groups of userswithshared interests are the way forward.We hear from writer and tech historian Benj Edwards about the BBS era of the early1990s; University of

en

26:42

Peak social media: The power of influencers

FT Tech Tonic ·

2023/07/18

Social media today is less about making friends and more about following popular content creators. While those creators are starting to hold some power over the platforms themselves, they’re also looking to become less reliant on the platforms that have enabled them to find fame and fortune online. What does it mean for the future of social media platforms? Our producer Josh Gabert-Doyon travels to the VidCon convention in Anaheim, California to speak to the people at the heart of the creator

en

26:13

Peak social media: The debate over young users’...

FT Tech Tonic ·

2023/07/11

There’s a growing feeling that social media is bad for us: bad for society and bad for our wellbeing. That trend has culminated in a new wave of legislation in the United States aiming to address social media’s impact on young people’s mental health. But in this episode, Elaine Moore, deputy editor of the FT’s Lex column, looks at some of the unanswered questions over whether social media really causes us harm, and what legislation will mean for the future of the social media business model. Are we

en

251 results

Similar Podcasts

Lead With AI

Tamara Nall

Linux in the Ham Shack

Black Sparrow Media

Data Engineering Podcast

Tobias Macey

Eye On A.I.

Craig S. Smith

Reflections

Livewire Labs