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    Technology

    London Futurists

    Anticipating and managing exponential impact – hosts David Wood and Calum Chace

    Calum 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 Pandora’s Brain and Pandora’s Oracle, a pair of techno-thrillers about the first superintelligence. He is a regular contributor to magazines, newspapers, and radio.

    In the last decade, Calum has given over 150 talks in 20 countries on six continents. Videos of his talks, and lots of other materials are available at https://calumchace.com/.

    He is co-founder of a think tank focused on the future of jobs, called the Economic Singularity Foundation. The Foundation has published Stories from 2045, a collection of short stories written by its members.

    Before becoming a full-time writer and speaker, Calum had a 30-year career in journalism and in business, as a marketer, a strategy consultant and a CEO. He studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford University, which confirmed his suspicion that science fiction is actually philosophy in fancy dress.

    David Wood is Chair of London Futurists, and is the author or lead editor of twelve books about the future, including The Singularity Principles, Vital Foresight, The Abolition of Aging, Smartphones and Beyond, and Sustainable Superabundance.

    He is also principal of the independent futurist consultancy and publisher Delta Wisdom, executive director of the Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV) Foundation, Foresight Advisor at SingularityNET, and a board director at the IEET (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies). He regularly gives keynote talks around the world on how to prepare for radical disruption. See https://deltawisdom.com/.

    As a pioneer of the mobile computing and smartphone industry, he co-founded Symbian in 1998. By 2012, software written by his teams had been included as the operating system on 500 million smartphones.

    From 2010 to 2013, he was Technology Planning Lead (CTO) of Accenture Mobility, where he also co-led Accenture’s Mobility Health business initiative.

    Has an MA in Mathematics from Cambridge, where he also undertook doctoral research in the Philosophy of Science, and a DSc from the University of Westminster.

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    Copyright: © 2022 London Futurists

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    Latest Episodes:
    Taming the Machine, with Nell Watson Jun 20, 2024
    Show notes

    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 machine: ethically harness the power of AI”, whose author, Nell Watson, joins us in this episode.
    Nell’s many roles include: Chair of IEEE’s Transparency Experts Focus Group, Executive Consultant on philosophical matters for Apple, and President of the European Responsible Artificial Intelligence Office. She also leads several organizations such as EthicsNet.org, which aims to teach machines prosocial behaviours, and CulturalPeace.org, which crafts Geneva Conventions-style rules for cultural conflict.
    Selected follow-ups:

    • Nell Watson's website
    • Taming the Machine - book website
    • BodiData (corporation)
    • Post Office Horizon scandal: Why hundreds were wrongly prosecuted - BBC News
    • Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms - Politico
    • Robodebt: Illegal Australian welfare hunt drove people to despair - BBC News
    • What is the infected blood scandal and will victims get compensation? - BBC News
    • MIRI 2024 Mission and Strategy Update - from the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI)
    • British engineering giant Arup revealed as $25 million deepfake scam victim- CNN
    • Zersetzung psychological warfare technique - Wikipedia


    Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration


    AI Impacts Survey - The key implications, with Katja Grace Jun 13, 2024
    Show notes

    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 published this January, comprising responses from 2,778 participants. As far as we know, this is the biggest survey of its kind to date.
    Among the highlights are that the time respondents expect it will take to develop an AI with human-level performance dropped between one and five decades since the 2022 survey. So ChatGPT has not gone unnoticed.
    Selected follow-ups:

    • AI Impacts
    • World Spirit Sock Puppet - Katja's blog
    • Survey of 2,778 AI authors: six parts in pictures - from AI Impacts
    • OpenAI researcher who resigned over safety concerns joins Anthropic - article in The Verge about Jan Leike
    • MIRI 2024 Mission and Strategy Update - from the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI)
    • Future of Humanity Institute 2005-2024: Final Report- by Anders Sandberg (PDF)
    • Centre for the Governance of AI
    • Reasons for Persons - Article by Katja about Derek Parfit and theories of personal identity
    • OpenAI Says It Has Started Training GPT-4 Successor - article in Forbes


    Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration


    Cryonics, cryocrastination, and the future: changing minds, with Max More Jun 05, 2024
    Show notes

    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, the world’s biggest cryonics organisation.
    Max is firmly optimistic about our future prospects, and wary of any attempts to impede or regulate the development of technologies which can enhance or augment us.
    Selected follow-ups:

    • Extropic Thoughts - Max More's writing on Substack
    • The Biostasis Standard - Max's writings on "the latest in the field of biostasis and cryonics"
    • Neophile - Wikipedia
    • The Time of the Ice Box - Episode of 1970 BBC children's TV series Timeslip
    • Cryostasis Revival: The Recovery of Cryonics Patients through Nanomedicine - 2022 book by Robert Freitas
    • Researchers perform first successful transplant of functional cryopreserved rat kidney - news from the University of Minnesota
    • Large Mammal BPF Prize Winning Announcement - news from the Brain Preservation Foundation
    • The European Biostasis Foundation
    • Alcor Life Extension Foundation

    Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration


    Stem cells, lab-grown meat, and potential new medical treatments, with Mark Kotter May 27, 2024
    Show notes

    Our guest in this episode is Dr. Mark Kotter. Mark is a neurosurgeon, stem cell biologist, and founder or co-founder of three biotech start-up companies that have collectively raised hundreds of millions of pounds: bit.bio, clock.bio, and Meatable.
    In addition, Mark still conducts neurosurgeries on patients weekly at the University of Cambridge.
    We talk to Mark about all his companies, but we start by discussing Meatable, one of the leading companies in the cultured meat sector. This is an area of technology which should have a far greater impact than most people are aware of, and it’s an area we haven’t covered before in the podcast.
    Selected follow-ups:

    • Dr Mark Kotter at the University of Cambridge
    • Meatable
    • bit.bio
    • clock.bio
    • After 25 years of hype, embryonic stem cells are still waiting for their moment - Article in MIT Technology Review
    • The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012
    • Moo's Law: An Investor’s Guide to the New Agrarian Revolution - book by Jim Mellon
    • What is the climate impact of eating meat and dairy?
    • Guidance for businesses on cell-cultivated products and the authorisation process
    • Wild mammals make up only a few percent of the world’s mammals - Our World In Data
    • BlueRock Therapeutics
    • Therapies under development at bit.bio
    • Stem Cell Gene Therapy Shows Promise in ALS Trial - from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

    Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration


    The economic case for a second longevity revolution, with Andrew Scott May 16, 2024
    Show notes

    The public discussion in a number of countries around the world expresses worries about what is called an aging society. These countries anticipate a future with fewer younger people who are active members of the economy, and a growing number of older people who need to be supported by the people still in the workforce. It’s an inversion of the usual demographic pyramid, with less at the bottom, and more at the top.
    However, our guest in this episode recommends a different framing of the future – not as an aging society, but as a longevity society, or even an evergreen society. He is Andrew Scott, Professor of Economics at the London Business School. His other roles include being a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and a consulting scholar at Stanford University’s Center on Longevity.

    Andrew’s latest book is entitled “The Longevity Imperative: Building a Better Society for Healthier, Longer Lives”. Commendations for the book include this from the political economist Daron Acemoglu, “A must-read book with an important message and many lessons”, and this from the historian Niall Ferguson, “Persuasive, uplifting and wise”.
    Selected follow-ups:

    • Personal website of Andrew Scott
    • Andrew Scott at the London Business School
    • The book The Longevity Imperative: How to Build a Healthier and More Productive Society to Support Our Longer Lives
    • Longevity, the 56 trillion dollar opportunity, with Andrew Scott- episode 40 in this series
    • Population Pyramids of the World from 1950 to 2100
    • Thomas Robert Malthus - Wikipedia
    • DALYs (Disability-adjusted life years) and QALYs (Quality-adjusted life years) - Wikipedia
    • VSL (Value of Statistical Life) - Wikipedia
    • The economic value of targeting aging - paper in Nature Aging, co-authored by Andrew Scott, Martin Ellison, and David Sinclair
    • A great-grandfather from Merseyside has become the world's oldest living man - BBC, 5th April 2024

    Related quotations:

    • Aging is "...revealed and made manifest only by the most unnatural experiment of prolonging an animal's life by sheltering it from the hazards of its ordinary existence" - Peter Medawar, 1951
    • "To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular, and, therefore, so much less natural than the others; ’tis the last and extremest sort of dying: and the more remote, the less to be hoped for" - Michel de Montaigne, 1580

    Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration


    Can AI be conscious? with Nicholas Humphrey May 07, 2024
    Show notes

    In this episode we return to the subject of whether AIs will become conscious, or, to use a word from the title of the latest book from our guest today, whether AIs will become sentient.
    Our guest is Nicholas Humphrey, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at London School of Economics, and Bye Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge. His latest book is “Sentience: the invention of consciousness”, and it explores the emergence and role of consciousness from a variety of perspectives.
    The book draws together insights from the more than fifty years Nick has been studying the evolution of intelligence and consciousness. He was the first person to demonstrate the existence of “blindsight” after brain damage in monkeys, studied mountain gorillas with Dian Fossey in Rwanda, originated the theory of the “social function of intellect”, and has investigated the evolutionary background of religion, art, healing, death-awareness, and suicide. Among his other awards are the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, the Pufendorf Medal, and the International Mind and Brain Prize.
    The conversation starts with some reflections on the differences between the views of our guest and his long-time philosophical friend Daniel Dennett, who had died shortly before the recording took place.
    Selected follow-ups:

    • The website of Nicholas Humphrey
    • The book Sentience: The Invention of Consciousness
    • How did consciousness evolve? - Recording of talk at the Royal Institution
    • The book Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett
    • Penrose triangle (article contains "real impossible triangles")
    • Keith Frankish (philosopher of mind)
    • The psychonic theory of consciousness- a theory included in the 1929 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica
    • Lawrence (Larry) Weiskrantz - the supervisor of Nicholas Humphrey
    • Blindside patient 'TN'
    • The Tin Men by Michael Frayn
    • What’s it like to be an AI: Anil Seth on London Futurists Podcast
    • Joe Simpson (mountaineer)
    • The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness
    • Scientific Declaration on Insect Sentience and Welfare
    • Rupert Sheldrake
    • Alternative Natural Philosophy Association (ANPA)

    Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration


    Progress with ending aging, with Aubrey de Grey Apr 21, 2024
    Show notes

    Our topic in this episode is progress with ending aging. Our guest is the person who literally wrote the book on that subject, namely the book, “Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime”. He is Aubrey de Grey, who describes himself in his Twitter biography as “spearheading the global crusade to defeat aging”.
    In pursuit of that objective, Aubrey co-founded the Methuselah Foundation in 2003, the SENS Research Foundation in 2009, and the LEV Foundation, that is the Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation, in 2022, where he serves as President and Chief Science Officer.
    Full disclosure: David also has a role on the executive management team of LEV Foundation, but for this recording he was wearing his hat as co-host of the London Futurists Podcast.
    The conversation opens with this question: "When people are asked about ending aging, they often say the idea sounds nice, but they see no evidence for any actual progress toward ending aging in humans. They say that they’ve heard talk about that subject for years, or even decades, but wonder when all that talk is going to result in people actually living significantly longer. How do you respond?"
    Selected follow-ups:

    • Aubrey de Grey on X (Twitter)
    • The book Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime
    • The Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV) Foundation
    • The SENS paradigm for ending aging , contrasted with the "Hallmarks of Aging" - a 2023 article in Rejuvenation Research
    • Progress reports from the current RMR project
    • The plan for RMR 2
    • The RAID (Rodent Aging Interventions Database) analysis that guided the design of RMR 1 and 2
    • Longevity Summit Dublin (LSD): 13-16 June 2024
    • Unblocking the Brain’s Drains to Fight Alzheimer’s - Doug Ethell of Leucadia Therapeuticsat LSD 2023 (explains the possible role of the cribriform plate)
    • Targeting Telomeres to Clear Cancer – Vlad Vitoc of MAIA Biotechnology at LSD 2023
    • How to Run a Lifespan Study of 1,000 Mice - Danique Wortel of Ichor Life Sciences at LSD 2023
    • XPrize Healthspan
    • The Dublin Longevity Declaration ("DLD")

    Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration


    What’s it like to be an AI, with Anil Seth Apr 13, 2024
    Show notes

    As artificial intelligence models become increasingly powerful, they both raise - and might help to answer - some very important questions about one of the most intriguing, fascinating aspects of our lives, namely consciousness.
    It is possible that in the coming years or decades, we will create conscious machines. If we do so without realising it, we might end up enslaving them, torturing them, and killing them over and over again. This is known as mind crime, and we must avoid it.
    It is also possible that very powerful AI systems will enable us to understand what our consciousness is, how it arises, and even how to manage it – if we want to do that.
    Our guest today is the ideal guide to help us explore the knotty issue of consciousness. Anil Seth is professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. He is amongst the most cited scholars on the topics of neuroscience and cognitive science globally, and a regular contributor to newspapers and TV programmes.
    His most recent book was published in 2021, and is called “Being You – a new science of consciousness”.
    The first question sets the scene for the conversation that follows: "In your book, you conclude that consciousness may well only occur in living creatures. You say 'it is life, rather than information processing, that breathes the fire into the equations.' What made you conclude that?"
    Selected follow-ups:

    • Anil Seth's website
    • Books by Anil Seth, including Being You
    • Consciousness in humans and other things - presentation by Anil Seth at The Royal Society, March 2024
    • Is consciousness more like chess or the weather? - an interview with Anil Seth
    • Autopoiesis - Wikipedia article about the concept introduced by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela
    • Akinetic mutism, Wikipedia
    • Cerebral organoid (Brain organoid), Wikipedia
    • AI Scientists: Safe and Useful AI? - by Yoshua Bengio, on AIs as oracles
    • Ex Machina (2014 film, written and directed by Alex Garland)
    • The Conscious Electromagnetic Information (Cemi) Field Theory by Johnjoe McFadden
    • The Electromagnetic Field Theory of Consciousness by Susan Pockett

    Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration


    Regulating Big Tech, with Adam Kovacevich Apr 04, 2024
    Show notes

    Our guest in this episode is Adam Kovacevich. Adam is the Founder and CEO of the Chamber of Progress, which describes itself as a center-left tech industry policy coalition that works to ensure that all citizens benefit from technological leaps, and that the tech industry operates responsibly and fairly.
    Adam has had a front row seat for more than 20 years in the tech industry’s political maturation, and he advises companies on navigating the challenges of political regulation.
    For example, Adam spent 12 years at Google, where he led a 15-person policy strategy and external affairs team. In that role, he drove the company’s U.S. public policy campaigns on topics such as privacy, security, antitrust, intellectual property, and taxation.
    We had two reasons to want to talk with Adam. First, to understand the kerfuffle that has arisen from the lawsuit launched against Apple by the U.S. Department of Justice and sixteen state Attorney Generals. And second, to look ahead to possible future interactions between tech industry regulators and the industry itself, especially as concerns about Artificial Intelligence rise in the public mind.
    Selected follow-ups:

    • Adam Kovacevich's website
    • The Chamber of Progress
    • Gartner Hype Cycle
    • "Justice Department Sues Apple for Monopolizing Smartphone Markets"
    • The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
    • Epic Games v. Apple (Wikipedia)
    • "AirTags Are the Best Thing to Happen to Tile" (Wired)
    • Adobe Firefly
    • The EU AI Act

    Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration



    The case for brain preservation, with Kenneth Hayworth Mar 29, 2024
    Show notes

    In this episode, we are delving into the fascinating topic of mind uploading. We suspect this idea is about to explode into public consciousness, because Nick Bostrom has a new book out shortly called “Deep Utopia”, which addresses what happens if superintelligence arrives and everything goes well. It was Bostrom’s last book, “Superintelligence”, that ignited the great robot freak-out of 2015.
    Our guest is Dr Kenneth Hayworth, a Senior Scientist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia. Janelia is probably America’s leading research institution in the field of connectomics – the precise mapping of the neurons in the human brain.
    Kenneth is a co-inventor of a process for imaging neural circuits at the nanometre scale, and he has designed and built several automated machines to do it. He is currently researching ways to extend Focused Ion Beam Scanning Electron Microscopy imaging of brain tissue to encompass much larger volumes than are currently possible.
    Along with John Smart, Kenneth co-founded the Brain Preservation Foundation in 2010, a non-profit organization with the goal of promoting research in the field of whole brain preservation.
    During the conversation, Kenneth made a strong case for putting more focus on preserving human brains via a process known as aldehyde fixation, as a way of enabling people to be uploaded in due course into new bodies. He also issued a call for action by members of the global cryonics community.
    Selected follow-ups:

    • Kenneth Hayworth
    • The Brain Preservation Foundation
    • An essay by Kenneth Hayworth: Killed by Bad Philosophy
    • The short story Psychological Counseling for First-time Teletransport Users (PDF)
    • 21st Century Medicine
    • Janelia Research Campus

    Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration


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