London Futurists

This is the first of a number of episodes on the broad theme of “the technoprogressive opportunity”. That’s the name of a conference taking place in London on the weekend of 19th and 20th September, co-organised by London Futurists and the IEET – the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. In these episodes, some of the speakers from that conference will be appearing as guests on this show. Our guest today is one of these speakers, Matteo Rossi MacDermant, a technophilosopher from the University of New Mexico. Matteo hosts a show called “Bread and Robots”, which covers subjects such as post-scarcity economics, universal basic income, the tech workers movement, and how technology can be steered toward collective abundance rather than corporate exploitation. Matteo is also the instructor for an online course called “An introduction to technoprogressive worldbuilding”. Selected follow-ups: The Technoprogressive Opportunity: Event in London, Sept 19-20 The IEET - A Technoprogressive Think-Tank Matteo Rossi MacDermant - LinkedIn Bread and Robots - Podcast and Substack by Matteo Rossi MacDermant An Introduction to Technoprogressive Worldbuilding "Technoprogressive Declaration" - from Transvision 2014 2017 update to the Technoprogressive Declaration UBI Guide - by Scott Santens Universal Basic Capital - Windfall Trust "How a Land Value Tax Can Fund a UBI" - Scott Santens Universal Basic Income and/or Alternatives - London Futurists conference held in 2018 "Why the AI world is suddenly obsessed with a 160-year-old economics paradox" - Jevon's Paradox explained by Greg Rosalsky "The Longevity City: Cities as the Engines of Healthy Longevity" - essay by Matteo Rossi MacDermant "The London boroughs with the best and worst 'healthy life' expectancy" "The Abolition of Aging" - book by David Wood (includes analysis of economic implications) Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

AI-driven automation of cognitive labour is not merely another technological transition but a structural discontinuity that will end, sooner or later, the central role of wages in how society operates. This discontinuity can be called “The End of Postwar Capitalism”. That’s the conclusion of a tightly argued set of essays, “The Discontinuity Thesis”, written by our guest in this episode, Ben Luong. The essays look at a range of arguments that all try to make the case that wages paid for cognitive labour will remain significant for the majority of people, so that capitalism can continue in place, even with AI having greatly expanded capabilities. According to Ben, each of these arguments fail. These back-and-forth debates are what we explore in this episode. Selected follow-ups: "The Discontinuity Thesis: A Sequence of Seven Essays on Why Postwar Capitalism Ends" by Ben Luong "Mark Zuckerberg just declared war on the entire advertising industry" - The Verge "P versus NP problem" - Wikipedia "KPMG Pulls AI Report After Hallucinated Claims About Major Organisations" - AI Insider "GDPval-AA v2 Leaderboard" - Artificial Analysis "OSWorld: 369 real computer tasks across Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu requiring GUI interaction... Much harder than web-only benchmarks" "Sorites paradox" - Wikipedia "Young people not in education, employment or training (NEET), UK: May 2026" - Office of National Statistics "Five Years" - Song by David Bowie "How ZEISS and ASML Enable the Modern Chip Industry" - Rob Hoeijmakers "Mistral AI’s $830 Million Debt Financing: Inside the European Bet on 13,800 Nvidia GPUs and a Paris AI Data Center" - Marcus Chen "Colossus (data center)" - Wikipedia "Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence" - Stanford Digital Economy Lab "Appendix I: What Would Refute the Thesis" - by Ben Luong "The Cope Index: Tracking who's coping hardest about the end of work" - by Ben Luong "The AI Alignment Problem" - from "The Singularity Principles" Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

This episode continues our investigation into the implications of advanced AI for jobs, and specifically, how to design an economic system that makes a huge success of full automation by AI. Back in 2017, Bill Gates mused that governments should address radical automation by taxing robots. Gates may not have known it at the time, but he was suggesting a Pigouvian tax. In a 1920 book called “The Economics of Welfare”, Arthur Pigou proposed levying taxes on activities that generate negative externalities — costs on third parties to a transaction. The classic example of that is pollution: a factory produces goods but creates pollution. The market price of the goods doesn't reflect the pollution costs, so the factory managers don’t try very hard to minimise them. A Pigouvian tax adds the social cost of the pollution into the price, so the producer is incentivised to minimise it. Gerry Tsoukalas and Brett Falk have published a well-received paper called “The AI Layoff Trap”, which recommends introducing a Pigouvian tax on automation that eliminates human jobs. Their proposal deserves credit for taking seriously the idea that AI may well cause severe automation, perhaps full automation – i.e. the Economic Singularity. The paper describes how firms face a prisoner’s dilemma. If they automate all their jobs then there will be no consumers to pay for any of their products. But if any of them don’t, their automating competitors will drive them out of business. Tsoukalas and Falk point out, counter-intuitively, that the fiercer the competition, the more acute the dilemma, so if we want to hold back automation, we might be better off with monopoly-ridden economies. Selected follow-ups: Gerry Tsoukalas Brett Hemenway Falk The AI Layoff Trap - The Wharton School Research Paper PDF of the AI Layoff Trap paper Arthur Pigou - Wikipedia Prisoner's dilemma - Wikipedia "Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI" "Chinese court rules firms can’t lay off workers on AI grounds" Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

This episode continues our investigation into the potential wide-ranging implications of advanced AI for economics. Traditionally, value is said to be created by a combination of capital, which covers the cost of materials and equipment, and labour, whereby humans exercise skills, ingenuity, diligence, attention, and more. What has been a constant debate is the appropriate division of rewards between capital and labour. Critics of the operation of capitalism have often predicted that an accumulation of value within small groups of owners of capital will cause economic instabilities and a subsequent collapse. Despite these forecasts, capitalism has, so far, demonstrated great resilience, defying predictions of its collapse. But if human labour is increasingly displaced by advanced automation, the balance of labour and capital will be fundamentally changed, and capitalism will come under unprecedented pressures. That’s the thesis of our guest today, Ted Shelton. David first met Ted about 25 years ago, when Ted was Chief Strategy Officer of the software development tools company Borland, and David was an executive within the early smartphone industry. Since that time, Ted has worked for a variety of companies in and around Silicon Valley, including PwC, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Catalytic, Bain, and Inflection AI. Recently, he has been giving a great deal of thought to where AI is taking the economy. Selected follow-ups: Ted Shelton's posts on LinkedIn "On the Transformation of Capitalism's Fundamental Assumptions Under Conditions of Scaling Machine Intelligence" - working paper by Ted Shelton "The Industrial Economy Is Ending. What Comes Next?" - by Ted Shelton Thomas Piketty's book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" - Wikipedia Nicholas Eberstadt's book "Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis" - Wikipedia Richard Sutton's essay "Bitter Lesson" - Wikipedia "Technofeudalism" - articles by Yanis Varoufakis Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

What happens if AI delivers major advances in capability and productivity, but also creates significant disruption to jobs, incomes, and public finances? That question sits at the heart of today’s episode. Our guest is Adrian Brown, the Founder and Chief Executive of Windfall Trust, a nonprofit focused on helping governments and societies prepare for the economic consequences of advanced AI. Windfall describes itself not as a think tank, but as a “policy accelerator for the age of artificial intelligence”. Their work starts from a simple premise: if AI systems significantly reshape the economy, then the question is not only how we build them, but how we prepare for their impacts, and how the gains are ultimately shared. Before founding Windfall Trust, Adrian was the founding Executive Director of the Centre for Public Impact, worked as a policy advisor in the UK Cabinet Office, and held roles at McKinsey and the Boston Consulting Group. Selected follow-ups: Windfall Trust Exercise Cygnus (Wikipedia) Erik Brynjolfsson (personal site) Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence (paper by Erik Brynjolfsson and colleagues) Anton Korinek (personal site) Windfall's UK Scenarios exercise The Economic Singularity (recent discussion paper by Calum Chace) Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age (OpenAI) UK Government announcement of the formation of "The AI and Future of Work Unit" UK Chancellor Rachel Reeve's announcement of a new "AI Economics Institute" "AI will kill income tax" - episode of Robert Peston's podcast "The Rest is Money" Windfall Policy Atlas Task-Completion Time Horizons of Frontier AI Models (METR) Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

When we started this Podcast back in August 2022, we, Calum and David, announced the theme to be “Anticipating and managing exponential impact”. We talked about three sub-themes: Developing the skills of exponential foresight; Distinguishing between scenarios, whether they were plausible or implausible, and whether they were desirable or undesirable; and thirdly, Supporting the community of collaborative exponential foresight. 126 episodes later, as we reach the transition between 2025 and 2026, it’s a good time for the two of us to take stock. Accordingly, in this episode, we each pick out a number of events from the last 12 months which we see as potential signals of larger exponential impact ahead. Selected follow-ups: An MIT report that 95% of AI pilots fail spooked investors - by Jeremy Kahn The Shape of AI: Jaggedness, Bottlenecks and Salients - by Ethan Mollick The Road To Superintelligence - by Calum AI Doomers, Accelerationists & Scouts - Digital Disruption The Economic Singularity - book by Calum How can better foresight actually improve the world? - Webinar in the series "From forecasts to levers" Disrupting the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign - Anthropic Major Neuromorphic Computing projects - listed by Conscium Why AI Agent Verification Is A Critical Industry - by Calum Climate change and populism: Grounds for optimism? - LFP episode with Matt Burgess What's Our Problem? - book by Tim Urban OpenAI and Retro Biosciences achieve 50x increase in expressing stem cell reprogramming markers Progress at LEVF, December 2025 - by David UK Biobank The THRIVE Act - Regenerative Medicine Foundation Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Almost every serious discussion about options to constrain the development of advanced AI results in someone raising the question: “But what about China?” The worry behind this question is that slowing down AI research and development in the US and Europe will allow China to race ahead. It's true: the relationship between China and the rest of the world has many complications. That’s why we’re delighted that our guest in this episode is Kayla Blomquist, the Co-founder and Director of the Oxford China Policy Lab, or OCPL for short. OCPL describes itself as a global community of China and emerging technology researchers at Oxford, who produce policy-relevant research to navigate risks in the US-China relationship and beyond. In parallel with her role at OCPL, Kayla is pursuing a DPhil at the Oxford Internet Institute. She is a recent fellow at the Centre for Governance of AI, and the lead researcher and contributing author to the Oxford China Briefing Book. She holds an MSc from the Oxford Internet Institute and a BA with Honours in International Relations, Public Policy, and Mandarin Chinese from the University of Denver. She also studied at Peking University and is professionally fluent in Mandarin. Kayla previously worked as a diplomat in the U.S. Mission to China, where she specialized in the governance of emerging technologies, human rights, and improving the use of new technology within government services. Selected follow-ups: Kayla Blomquist - Personal site Oxford China Policy Lab The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) Google AI defeats human Go champion (Ke Jie) AI Safety Summit 2023 (Bletchley Park, UK) United Kingdom: Balancing Safety, Security, and Growth - OCPL China wants to lead the world on AI regulation - report from APEC 2025 China's WAICO proposal and the reordering of global AI governance Impact of AI on cyber threat from now to 2027 Options for the future of the global governance of AI - London Futurists Webinar A Tentative Draft of a Treaty - Online appendix to the book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies An International Agreement to Prevent the Premature Creation of Artificial Superintelligence Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Our guest in this episode is Stephen Witt, an American journalist and author who writes about the people driving the technological revolutions. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, and is famous for deep-dive investigations. Stephen's new book is "The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip", which has just won the 2025 Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award. It is a definitive account of the rise of Nvidia, from its foundation in a Denny's restaurant in 1993 as a video game component manufacturer, to becoming the world's most valuable company, and the hardware provider for the current AI boom. Stephen's previous book, “How Music Got Free”, is a history of music piracy and the MP3, and was also a finalist for the FT Business Book of the Year. Selected follow-ups: Stephen Witt - personal site Articles by Stephen Witt on The New Yorker The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip - book site Stephen Witt wins FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year - Financial Times Nvidia Executives Battle Royale (Japanese film) - IMDb The Economic Singularity - book by Calum Chace A Cubic Millimeter of a Human Brain Has Been Mapped in Spectacular Detail - Nature NotebookLM - by Google Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Our guest in this episode is Holly Elmore, who is the Founder and Executive Director of PauseAI US. The website pauseai-us.org starts with this headline: “Our proposal is simple: Don’t build powerful AI systems until we know how to keep them safe. Pause AI.” But PauseAI isn’t just a talking shop. They’re probably best known for organising public protests. The UK group has demonstrated in Parliament Square in London, with Big Ben in the background, and also outside the offices of Google DeepMind. A group of 30 PauseAI protesters gathered outside the OpenAI headquarters in San Francisco. Other protests have taken place in New York, Portland, Ottawa, Sao Paulo, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Oslo, Stockholm, and Sydney, among other cities. Previously, Holly was a researcher at the think tank Rethink Priorities in the area of Wild Animal Welfare. And before that, she studied evolutionary biology in Harvard’s Organismic and Evolutionary Biology department. Selected follow-ups: Holly Elmore - substack PauseAI US PauseAI - global site Wild Animal Suffering... and why it matters Hard problem of consciousness - Wikipedia The Unproven (And Unprovable) Case For Net Wild Animal Suffering. A Reply To Tomasik - by Michael Plant Leading Evolution Compassionately - Herbivorize Predators David Pearce (philosopher) - Wikipedia The AI industry is racing toward a precipice - Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) Nick Bostrom's new views regarding AI/AI safety - reddit AI is poised to remake the world; Help us ensure it benefits all of us - Future of Life Institute On being wrong about AI - by Scott Aharonson, on his previous suggestion that it might take "a few thousand years" to reach superhuman AI California Institute of Machine Consciousness - organisation founded by Joscha Bach Pausing AI is the only safe approach to digital sentience - article by Holly Elmore Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers - book by Geoffrey Moore Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Popular movies sometimes feature leagues of superheroes who are ready to defend the Earth against catastrophe. In this episode, we’re going to be discussing some real-life superheroes, as chronicled in the new book by our guest, Tom Ough. The book is entitled “The Anti-Catastrophe League: The Pioneers And Visionaries On A Quest To Save The World”. Some of these heroes are already reasonably well known, but others were new to David, and, he suspects, to many of the book’s readers. Tom is a London-based journalist. Earlier in his career he worked in newspapers, mostly for the Telegraph, where he was a staff feature-writer and commissioning editor. He is currently a senior editor at UnHerd, where he commissions essays and occasionally writes them. Perhaps one reason why he writes so well is that he has a BA in English Language and Literature from Oxford University, where he was a Casberd scholar. Selected follow-ups: About Tom Ough The Anti-Catastrophe League - The book's webpage On novel methods of pandemic prevention What is effective altruism? (EA) Sam Bankman-Fried - Wikipedia (also covers FTX) Open Philanthropy Conscium Here Comes the Sun - book by Bill McKibben The 10 Best Beatles Songs (Based on Streams) Carrington Event - Wikipedia Mirror life - Wikipedia Future of Humanity Institute 2005-2024: final report - by Anders Sandberg Oxford FHI Global Catastrophic Risks - FHI Conference, 2008 Forethought Review of Nick Bostrom’s Deep Utopia - by Calum DeepMind and OpenAI claim gold in International Mathematical Olympiad What the Heck is Hubble Tension? The Decade Ahead - by Leopold Aschenbrenner AI 2027 Anglofuturism Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Craig Kaplan has been thinking about superintelligence longer than most. He bought the URL superintelligence.com back in 2006, and many years before that, in the late 1980s, he co-authored a series of papers with one of the founding fathers of AI, Herbert Simon. Craig started his career as a scientist with IBM, and later founded and ran a venture-backed company called PredictWallStreet that brought the wisdom of the crowd to Wall Street, and improved the performance of leading hedge funds. He sold that company in 2020, and now spends his time working out how to make the first superintelligence safe. As he puts it, he wants to reduce P(Doom) and increase P(Zoom). Selected follow-ups: iQ Company Superintelligence - by iQ Company Herbert A. Simon - Wikipedia Amara’s Law and Its Place in the Future of Tech - Pohan Lin The Society of Mind - book by Marvin Minsky AI 'godfather' Geoffrey Hinton warns of dangers as he quits Google - BBC News Statement on AI Risk - Center for AI Safety I’ve Spent My Life Measuring Risk. AI Rings Every One of My Alarm Bells - Paul Tudor Jones Secrets of Software Quality: 40 Innovations from IBM - book by Craig Kaplan London Futurists Podcast episode featuring David Brin Reason in human affairs - book by Herbert Simon US and China will intervene to halt ‘suicide race’ of AGI – Max Tegmark If Anybody Builds It, Everyone Dies - book by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares AGI-25 - conference in Reykjavik The First Global Brain Workshop - Brussels 2001 Center for Integrated Cognition Paul S. Rosenbloom Tatiana Shavrina, Meta Henry Minsky launches AI startup inspired by father’s MIT research Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Many people expect improvements in technology over the next few years, but fewer people are optimistic about improvements in the economy. Especially in Europe, there’s a narrative that productivity has stalled, that the welfare state is over-stretched, and that the regions of the world where innovation will be rewarded are the US and China – although there are lots of disagreements about which of these two countries will gain the upper hand. To discuss these topics, our guest in this episode is Carl Benedikt Frey, the Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI & Work at the Oxford Internet Institute. Carl is also a Fellow at Mansfield College, University of Oxford, and is Director of the Future of Work Programme and Oxford Martin Citi Fellow at the Oxford Martin School. Carl’s new book has the ominous title, “How Progress Ends”. The subtitle is “Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations”. A central premise of the book is that our ability to think clearly about the possibilities for progress and stagnation today is enhanced by looking backward at the rise and fall of nations around the globe over the past thousand years. The book contains fascinating analyses of how countries at various times made significant progress, and at other times stagnated. The book also considers what we might deduce about the possible futures of different economies worldwide. Selected follow-ups: Professor Carl-Benedikt Frey - Oxford Martin School How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations - Princeton University Press Stop Acting Like This Is Normal - Ezra Klein ("Stop Funding Trump’s Takeover") OpenAI o3 Breakthrough High Score on ARC-AGI-Pub A Human Amateur Beat a Top Go-Playing AI Using a Simple Trick - Vice The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation? - Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne Europe's Choice: Policies for Growth and Resilience - Alfred Kammer, IMF MIT Radiation Laboratory ("Rad Lab") Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Our guest in this episode is Noel Hurley. Noel is a highly experienced technology strategist with a long career at the cutting edge of computing. He spent two decade-long stints at Arm, the semiconductor company whose processor designs power hundreds of billions of devices worldwide. Today, he’s a co-founder of Literal Labs, where he’s developing Tsetlin Machines. Named after Michael Tsetlin, a Soviet mathematician, these are a kind of machine learning model that are energy-efficient, flexible, and surprisingly effective at solving complex problems - without the opacity or computational overhead of large neural networks. AI has long had two main camps, or tribes. One camp works with neural networks, including Large Language Models. Neural networks are brilliant at pattern matching, and can be compared to human instinct, or fast thinking, to use Daniel Kahneman´s terminology. Neural nets have been dominant since the first Big Bang in AI in 2012, when Geoff Hinton and others demonstrated the foundations for deep learning. For decades before the 2012 Big Bang, the predominant form of AI was symbolic AI, also known as Good Old Fashioned AI. This can be compared to logical reasoning, or slow learning in Kahneman´s terminology. Tsetlin Machines have characteristics of both neural networks and symbolic AI. They are rule-based learning systems built from simple automata, not from neurons or weights. But their learning mechanism is statistical and adaptive, more like machine learning than traditional symbolic AI. Selected follow-ups: Noel Hurley - Literal Labs A New Generation of Artificial Intelligence - Literal Labs Michael Tsetlin - Wikipedia Thinking, Fast and Slow - book by Daniel Kahneman 54x faster, 52x less energy - MLPerf Inference metrics Introducing the Model Context Protocol (MCP) - Anthropic Pioneering Safe, Efficient AI - Conscium Smartphones and Beyond - a personal history of Psion and Symbian The Official History of Arm - Arm Interview with Sir Robin Saxby - IT Archive How Spotify came to be worth billions - BBC Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Could the future see the emergence and adoption of a new field of engineering called nucleonics, in which the energy of nuclear fusion is accessed at relatively low temperatures, producing abundant clean safe energy? This kind of idea has been discussed since 1989, when the claims of cold fusion first received media attention. It is often assumed that the field quickly reached a dead-end, and that the only scientists who continue to study it are cranks. However, as we’ll hear in this episode, there may be good reasons to keep an open mind about a number of anomalous but promising results. Our guest is Jonah Messinger, who is a Winton Scholar and Ph.D. student at the Cavendish Laboratory of Physics at the University of Cambridge. Jonah is also a Research Affiliate at MIT, a Senior Energy Analyst at the Breakthrough Institute, and previously he was a Visiting Scientist and ThinkSwiss Scholar at ETH Zürich. His work has appeared in research journals, on the John Oliver show, and in publications of Columbia University. He earned his Master’s in Energy and Bachelor’s in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was named to its Senior 100 Honorary. Selected follow-ups: Jonah Messinger (The Breakthrough Institute) nucleonics.org U.S. Department of Energy Announces $10 Million in Funding to Projects Studying Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions (ARPA-E) How Anomalous Science Breaks Through - by Jonah Messinger Wolfgang Pauli (Wikiquote) Cold fusion: A case study for scientific behavior (Understanding Science) Calculated fusion rates in isotopic hydrogen molecules - by SE Koonin & M Nauenberg Known mechanisms that increase nuclear fusion rates in the solid state - by Florian Metzler et al Introduction to superradiance (Cold Fusion Blog) Peter L. Hagelstein - Professor at MIT Models for nuclear fusion in the solid state - by Peter Hagelstein et al Risk and Scientific Reputation: Lessons from Cold Fusion - by Huw Price Katalin Karikó (Wikipedia) “Abundance” and Its Insights for Policymakers - by Hadley Brown Identifying intellectual dark matter - by Florian Metzler and Jonah Messinger Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

This episode of London Futurists Podcast is a special joint production with the AI and You podcast which is hosted by Peter Scott. It features a three-way discussion, between Peter, Calum, and David, on the future of AI, with particular focus on AI agents, AI safety, and AI boycotts. Peter Scott is a futurist, speaker, and technology expert helping people master technological disruption. After receiving a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Cambridge University, he went to California to work for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His weekly podcast, “Artificial Intelligence and You” tackles three questions: What is AI? Why will it affect you? How do you and your business survive and thrive through the AI Revolution? Peter’s second book, also called “Artificial Intelligence and You,” was released in 2022. Peter works with schools to help them pivot their governance frameworks, curricula, and teaching methods to adapt to and leverage AI. Selected follow-ups: Artificial Intelligence and You (podcast) Making Sense of AI - Peter's personal website Artificial Intelligence and You (book) AI agent verification - Conscium Preventing Zero-Click AI Threats: Insights from EchoLeak - TrendMicro Future Crimes - book by Marc Goodman How TikTok Serves Up Sex and Drug Videos to Minors - Washington Post COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and hesitancy - Wikipedia Cambridge Analytica - Wikipedia Invisible Rulers - book by Renée DiResta 2025 Northern Ireland riots (Ballymena) - Wikipedia Google DeepMind Slammed by Protesters Over Broken AI Safety Promise Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

The guest in this episode is Hugo Spowers. Hugo has led an adventurous life. In the 1970s and 80s he was an active member of the Dangerous Sports Club, which invented bungee jumping, inspired by an initiation ceremony in Vanuatu. Hugo skied down a black run in St.Moritz in formal dress, seated at a grand piano, and he broke his back, neck and hips when he misjudged the length of one of his bungee ropes. Hugo is a petrol head, and done more than his fair share of car racing. But if he’ll excuse the pun, his driving passion was always the environment, and he is one of the world’s most persistent and dedicated pioneers of hydrogen cars. He is co-founder and CEO of Riversimple, a 24 year-old pre-revenue startup, which have developed 5 generations of research vehicles. Hydrogen cars are powered by electric motors using electricity generated by fuel cells. Fuel cells are electrolysis in reverse. You put in hydrogen and oxygen, and what you get out is electricity and water. There is a long-standing debate among energy experts about the role of hydrogen fuel cells in the energy mix, and Hugo is a persuasive advocate. Riversimple’s cars carry modest sized fuel cells complemented by supercapacitors, with motors for each of the four wheels. The cars are made of composites, not steel, because minimising weight is critical for fuel efficiency, pollution, and road safety. The cars are leased rather than sold, which enables a circular business model, involving higher initial investment per car, and no built-in obsolescence. The initial, market entry cars are designed as local run-arounds for households with two cars, which means the fuelling network can be built out gradually. And Hugo also has strong opinions about company governance. Selected follow-ups: Hugo Spowers - Wikipedia Riversimple Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Can we use AI to improve how we handle conflict? Or even to end the worst conflicts that are happening all around us? That’s the subject of the new book of our guest in this episode, Simon Horton. The book has the bold title “The End of Conflict: How AI will end war and help us get on better”. Simon has a rich background, including being a stand-up comedian and a trapeze artist – which are, perhaps, two useful skills for dealing with acute conflict. He has taught negotiation and conflict resolution for 20 years, across 25 different countries, where his clients have included the British Army, the Saudi Space Agency, and Goldman Sachs. His previous books include “Change their minds” and “The leader’s guide to negotiation”. Selected follow-ups: Simon Horton The End of Conflict - book website The Better Angels of our Nature - book by Steven Pinker Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2024 - UK Office of National Statistics How Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley forged an unlikely friendship - Belfast Telegraph Review of Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now by Scott Aaronson A Detailed Critique of One Section of Steven Pinker’s Chapter “Existential Threats” by Philosophy Torres End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration - book by Peter Turchin Why do chimps kill each other? - Science Using Artificial Intelligence in Peacemaking: The Libya Experience - Colin Irwin, University of Liverpool Retrospective on the Oslo Accord - New York Times Remesh Polis - Democracy Technologies Waves: Tech-Powered Democracy - Demos Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Our guest in this episode is Nate Soares, President of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, or MIRI. MIRI was founded in 2000 as the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence by Eliezer Yudkowsky, with support from a couple of internet entrepreneurs. Among other things, it ran a series of conferences called the Singularity Summit. In 2012, Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil, acquired the Singularity Summit, including the Singularity brand, and the Institute was renamed as MIRI. Nate joined MIRI in 2014 after working as a software engineer at Google, and since then he’s been a key figure in the AI safety community. In a blogpost at the time he joined MIRI he observed “I turn my skills towards saving the universe, because apparently nobody ever got around to teaching me modesty.” MIRI has long had a fairly pessimistic stance on whether AI alignment is possible. In this episode, we’ll explore what drives that view—and whether there is any room for hope. Selected follow-ups: Nate Soares - MIRI Yudkowsky and Soares Announce Major New Book: “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” - MIRI The Bayesian model of probabilistic reasoning During safety testing, o1 broke out of its VM - Reddit Leo Szilard - Physics World David Bowie - Five Years - Old Grey Whistle Test Amara's Law - IEEE Robert Oppenheimer calculation of p(doom) JD Vance commenting on AI-2027 SolidGoldMagikarp - LessWrong ASML Chicago Pile-1 - Wikipedia Castle Bravo - Wikipedia Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Our guest in this episode is Henry Shevlin. Henry is the Associate Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge, where he also co-directs the Kinds of Intelligence program and oversees educational initiatives. He researches the potential for machines to possess consciousness, the ethical ramifications of such developments, and the broader implications for our understanding of intelligence. In his 2024 paper, “Consciousness, Machines, and Moral Status,” Henry examines the recent rapid advancements in machine learning and the questions they raise about machine consciousness and moral status. He suggests that public attitudes towards artificial consciousness may change swiftly, as human-AI interactions become increasingly complex and intimate. He also warns that our tendency to anthropomorphise may lead to misplaced trust in and emotional attachment to AIs. Note: this episode is co-hosted by David and Will Millership, the CEO of a non-profit called Prism (Partnership for Research Into Sentient Machines). Prism is seeded by Conscium, a startup where both Calum and David are involved, and which, among other things, is researching the possibility and implications of machine consciousness. Will and Calum will be releasing a new Prism podcast focusing entirely on Conscious AI, and the first few episodes will be in collaboration with the London Futurists Podcast. Selected follow-ups: PRISM podcast Henry Shevlin - personal site Kinds of Intelligence - Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence Consciousness, Machines, and Moral Status - 2024 paper by Henry Shevlin Apply rich psychological terms in AI with care - by Henry Shevlin and Marta Halina What insects can tell us about the origins of consciousness - by Andrew Barron and Colin Klein Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness - By Patrick Butlin, Robert Long, et al Association for the Study of Consciousness Other researchers mentioned: Blake Lemoine Thomas Nagel Ned Block Peter Senge Galen Strawson David Chalmers David Benatar Thomas Metzinger Brian Tomasik Murray Shanahan Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

How can a binding international treaty be agreed and put into practice, when many parties are strongly tempted to break the rules of the agreement, for commercial or military advantage, and when cheating may be hard to detect? That’s the dilemma we’ll examine in this episode, concerning possible treaties to govern the development and deployment of advanced AI. Our guest is Otto Barten, Director of the Existential Risk Observatory, which is based in the Netherlands but operates internationally. In November last year, Time magazine published an article by Otto, advocating what his organisation calls a Conditional AI Safety Treaty. In March this year, these ideas were expanded into a 34-page preprint which we’ll be discussing today, “International Agreements on AI Safety: Review and Recommendations for a Conditional AI Safety Treaty”. Before co-founding the Existential Risk Observatory in 2021, Otto had roles as a sustainable energy engineer, data scientist, and entrepreneur. He has a BSc in Theoretical Physics from the University of Groningen and an MSc in Sustainable Energy Technology from Delft University of Technology. Selected follow-ups: Existential Risk Observatory There Is a Solution to AI’s Existential Risk Problem - Time International Agreements on AI Safety: Review and Recommendations for a Conditional AI Safety Treaty - Otto Barten and colleagues The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity - book by Toby Ord Grand futures and existential risk - Lecture by Anders Sandberg in London attended by Otto PauseAI StopAI Responsible Scaling Policies - METR Meta warns of 'worse' experience for European users - BBC News Accidental Nuclear War: a Timeline of Close Calls - FLI The Vulnerable World Hypothesis - Nick Bostrom Semiconductor Manufacturing Optics - Zeiss California Institute for Machine Consciousness Tipping point for large-scale social change? Just 25 percent - Penn Today Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

In this episode, we return to the subject of existential risks, but with a focus on what actions can be taken to eliminate or reduce these risks. Our guest is James Norris, who describes himself on his website as an existential safety advocate. The website lists four primary organizations which he leads: the International AI Governance Alliance, Upgradable, the Center for Existential Safety, and Survival Sanctuaries. Previously, one of James' many successful initiatives was Effective Altruism Global, the international conference series for effective altruists. He also spent some time as the organizer of a kind of sibling organization to London Futurists, namely Bay Area Futurists. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a triple major in psychology, sociology, and philosophy, as well as with minors in too many subjects to mention. Selected follow-ups: James Norris website Upgrade your life & legacy - Upgradable The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen Covey) Beneficial AI 2017 - Asilomar conference "...superintelligence in a few thousand days" - Sam Altman blogpost Amara's Law - DevIQ The Probability of Nuclear War (JFK estimate) AI Designs Chemical Weapons - The Batch The Vulnerable World Hypothesis - Nick Bostrom We Need To Build Trustworthy AI Systems To Monitor Other AI: Yoshua Bengio Instrumental convergence - Wikipedia Neanderthal extinction - Wikipedia Matrioshka brain - Wikipedia Will there be a 'WW3' before 2050? - Manifold prediction market Existential Safety Action Pledge An Urgent Call for Global AI Governance - IAIGA petition Build your survival sanctuary Other people mentioned include: Eliezer Yudkowsky, Roman Yampolskiy, Yan LeCun, Andrew Ng Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Our subject in this episode may seem grim – it’s the potential extinction of the human species, either from a natural disaster, like a supervolcano or an asteroid, or from our own human activities, such as nuclear weapons, greenhouse gas emissions, engineered biopathogens, misaligned artificial intelligence, or high energy physics experiments causing a cataclysmic rupture in space and time. These scenarios aren’t pleasant to contemplate, but there’s a school of thought that urges us to take them seriously – to think about the unthinkable, in the phrase coined in 1962 by pioneering futurist Herman Kahn. Over the last couple of decades, few people have been thinking about the unthinkable more carefully and systematically than our guest today, Sean ÓhÉigeartaigh. Sean is the author of a recent summary article from Cambridge University Press that we’ll be discussing, “Extinction of the human species: What could cause it and how likely is it to occur?” Sean is presently based in Cambridge where he is a Programme Director at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. Previously he was founding Executive Director of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and before that, he managed research activities at the Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford. Selected follow-ups: Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh - Leverhulme Centre Profile Extinction of the human species - by Sean ÓhÉigeartaigh Herman Kahn - Wikipedia Moral.me - by Conscium Classifying global catastrophic risks - by Shahar Avin et al Defence in Depth Against Human Extinction - by Anders Sandberg et al The Precipice - book by Toby Ord Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks - by METR Cold Takes - blog by Holden Karnofsky What Comes After the Paris AI Summit? - Article by Sean ARC-AGI - by François Chollet Henry Shevlin - Leverhulme Centre profile Eleos (includes Rosie Campbell and Robert Long) NeurIPS talk by David Chalmers Trustworthy AI Systems To Monitor Other AI: Yoshua Bengio The Unilateralist’s Curse - by Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Our guest in this episode, Ramez Naam, is described on his website as “climate tech investor, clean energy advocate, and award-winning author”. But that hardly starts to convey the range of deep knowledge that Ramez brings to a wide variety of fields. It was his 2013 book, “The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet”, that first alerted David to the breadth of scope of his insight about future possibilities – both good possibilities and bad possibilities. He still vividly remembers its opening words, quoting Charles Dickens from “The Tale of Two Cities”: Quote: “‘It was the best of times; it was the worst of times’ – the opening line of Charles Dickens’s 1859 masterpiece applies equally well to our present era. We live in unprecedented wealth and comfort, with capabilities undreamt of in previous ages. We live in a world facing unprecedented global risks—risks to our continued prosperity, to our survival, and to the health of our planet itself. We might think of our current situation as ‘A Tale of Two Earths’.” End quote. 12 years after the publication of “The Infinite Resource”, it seems that the Earth has become even better, but also even worse. Where does this leave the power of ideas? Or do we need more than ideas, as ominous storm clouds continue to gather on the horizon? Selected follow-ups: Ramez Naam - personal website The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet The Nexus Trilogy (Nexus Crux Apex) Jesse Jenkins (Princeton) Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet - book by Mark Lynas 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo - Wikipedia We cool Earth, with reflective clouds - Make Sunsets Direct Air Capture (DAC) - Wikipedia Frontier: An advance market commitment to accelerate carbon removal Toward a Responsible Solar Geoengineering Research Program - by David Keith South Korea scales down plans for nuclear power Microsoft chooses infamous nuclear site for AI power Machines of Loving Grace: How AI Could Transform the World for the Better - Essay by Dario Amodei Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

In this episode, our guest is Rebecca Finlay, the CEO at Partnership on AI (PAI). Rebecca previously joined us in Episode 62, back in October 2023, in what was the run-up to the Global AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park in the UK. Times have moved on, and earlier this month, Rebecca and the Partnership on AI participated in the latest global summit in that same series, held this time in Paris. This summit, breaking with the previous naming, was called the Global AI Action Summit. We’ll be hearing from Rebecca how things have evolved since we last spoke – and what the future may hold. Prior to joining Partnership on AI, Rebecca founded the AI & Society program at global research organization CIFAR, one of the first international, multistakeholder initiatives on the impact of AI in society. Rebecca’s insights have been featured in books and media including The Financial Times, The Guardian, Politico, and Nature Machine Intelligence. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences and sits on advisory bodies in Canada, France, and the U.S. Selected follow-ups: Partnership on AI Rebecca Finlay Our previous episode featuring Rebecca CIFAR (The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research) "It is more than time that we move from science fiction" - remarks by Anne Bouverot International AI Safety Report 2025 - report from expert panel chaired by Yoshua Bengio The Inaugural Conference of the International Association for Safe and Ethical AI (IASEAI) A.I. Pioneer Yoshua Bengio Proposes a Safe Alternative Amid Agentic A.I. Hype US and UK refuse to sign Paris summit declaration on ‘inclusive’ AI Current AI Collaborative event on AI accountability CERN for AI AI Summit Day 1: Harnessing AI for the Future of Work The Economic Singularity Why is machine consciousness important? (Conscium) Brain, Mind & Consciousness (CIFAR) Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

The most highly anticipated development in AI this year is probably the expected arrival of AI agents, also referred to as “agentic AI”. We are told that AI agents have the potential to reshape how individuals and organizations interact with technology. Our guest to help us explore this is Tom Davenport, Distinguished Professor in Information Technology and Management at Babson College, and a globally recognized thought leader in the areas of analytics, data science, and artificial intelligence. Tom has written, co-authored, or edited about twenty books, including "Competing on Analytics" and "The AI Advantage." He has worked extensively with leading organizations and has a unique perspective on the transformative impact of AI across industries. He has recently co-authored an article in the MIT Sloan Management Review, “Five Trends in AI and Data Science for 2025”, which included a section on AI agents – which is why we invited him to talk about the subject. Selected follow-ups: Tom Davenport - personal site Five Trends in AI and Data Science for 2025 - MIT Sloan Management Review Michael Martin Hammer - Wikipedia AI winter - Wikipedia AI is coming for the OnlyFans chat industry - Fortune How Gen AI and Analytical AI Differ — and When to Use Each - Harvard Business Review Truth Terminal - The AI Bot That Became a Crypto Millionaire - a16z Jim Simons - Wikipedia Why The "Godfather of AI" Now Fears His Own Creation - Curt Jaimungal interviews Geoffrey Hinton Attention Is All You Need - Google researchers Apple suspends error-strewn AI generated news alerts - BBC News Gen AI cuts costs by 30% - London Futurists Podcast episode featuring David Wakeling, partner at A&O Shearman The path to agentic automation is UiPath - UiPath Microsoft CEO Predicts: "AI Agents Will Replace ALL Software" - AI Insights Explorer NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang Keynote at CES 2025 - Nvidia Pioneering Safe, Efficient AI - Conscium A New Survey Of Generative AI Shows Lots Of Work To Do - October 2023 article by Tom Davenport Gen AI: Too much spend, too little benefit? - Goldman Sachs Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

In this episode, we return to a theme which is likely to become increasingly central to public discussion in the months and years ahead. To use a term coined by this podcast’s cohost Calum Chace, this theme is the Economic Singularity, namely the potential all-round displacement of humans from the workforce by ever more capable automation. That leads to the question: what are our options for managing the transition of society to increasing technological unemployment and technological underemployment. Our guest, who will be sharing his thinking on these questions, is the prolific writer and YouTuber David Shapiro. As well as keeping on top of fast-changing news about innovations in AI, David has been developing a set of ideas he calls post-labour economics – how an economy might continue to function even if humans can no longer gain financial rewards in direct return for their labour. Selected follow-ups: David Shapiro’s Substack David Shapiro's channel on YouTube Julia McCoy's channel on YouTube Next stop: Miami - Waymo Resource Based Economy Debt: The First 5,000 Years - book by David Graeber Broken Money: Why Our Financial System is Failing Us and How We Can Make it Better - book by Lyn Alden The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking - book by Saifedean Ammous Normalcy bias - Wikipedia Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty - book by Daron Acemoğlu and James A. Robinson Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail - book by Ray Dalio Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom - book by Grace Blakeley The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and Fully Automated Luxury Capitalism - book by Calum Chace Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Our guests in this episode have been described as the world’s two oldest scientifically astute longevity activists. They are Kenneth Scott, aged 82, who is based in Florida, and Helga Sands, aged 86, who lives in London. David has met both of them several times at a number of longevity events, and they always impress him, not only with their vitality and good health, but also with the level of knowledge and intelligence they apply to the question of which treatments are the best, for them personally and for others, to help keep people young and vibrant. Selected follow-ups: Waiting For God - 1990s BBC Comedy Adelle Davis, Nutritionist Roger J. Williams, Biochemist The Importance of Maintaining a Low Omega-6/Omega-3 Ratio Life Extension Magazine California Age Management Institute Fibrinogen and aging Professor Angus Dalgleish, Nuffield Health About Aubrey de Grey speaking at the Royal Institution George Church, Geneticist James Kirkland, Mayo Clinic Daniel Munoz-Espin, Cambridge Nobel Prize for John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka VSELs and S.O.N.G. laser Xtend Optimal Health Follistatin gene therapy, Minicircle Exosomes vs Stem Cells Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease - book by Caldwell Esselstyn Jr Dasatinib and Quercetin (senolytics) We reverse atherosclerosis - Repair Biotechnologies Bioreactor-Grown Mitochondria - Mitrix Nobel Winner Shinya Yamanaka: Cell Therapy Is ‘Very Promising’ For Cancer, Parkison's, More Death of the world's oldest man, 25th Nov 2024 Blueprint protocol - Bryan Johnson Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Our guest in this episode is Jeff LaPorte, a software engineer, entrepreneur and investor based in Vancouver, who writes Road to Artificia, a newsletter about discovering the principles of post‑AI societies. Calum recently came across Jeff's article “Valuing Humans in the Age of Superintelligence: HumaneRank” and thought it had some good, original ideas, so we wanted to invite Jeff onto the podcast and explore them. Selected follow-ups: Jeff LaPorte personal business website Road to Artificia: A newsletter about discovering the principles of societies post‑AI Valuing Humans in the Age of Superintelligence: HumaneRank Ideas Lying Around - article by Cory Doctorow about a famous saying by Milton Friedman PageRank - Wikipedia Nosedive (Black Mirror episode) - IMDb The Economic Singularity - book by Calum Chace World Chess Championship 2024 - WIkipedia WALL.E (2008 movie) - IMDb A day in the life of Asimov, 2045 - short story by David Wood Why didn't electricity immediately change manufacturing? - by Tim Harford, BBC Responsible use of artificial intelligence in government - Government of Canada Bipartisan House Task Force Report on Artificial Intelligence - U.S. House of Representatives Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Our subject in this episode is altruism – our human desire and instinct to assist each other, making some personal sacrifices along the way. More precisely, our subject is the possible future of altruism – a future in which our philanthropic activities – our charitable donations, and how we spend our discretionary time – could have a considerably greater impact than at present. The issue is that many of our present activities, which are intended to help others, aren’t particularly effective. That’s the judgement reached by our guest today, Stefan Schubert. Stefan is a researcher in philosophy and psychology, currently based in Stockholm, Sweden, and has previously held roles at the LSE and the University of Oxford. Stefan is the co-author of the recently published book “Effective Altruism and the Human Mind”. Selected follow-ups: Stefan Schubert - Effective Altruism Effective Altruism and the Human Mind: The Clash Between Impact and Intuition - Oxford University Press (open access) Centre for Effective Altruism Professor Nadira Faber - Uehiro Institute, Oxford What are the best charities to support in 2024? - Giving What We Can Effective Altruist Leaders Were Repeatedly Warned About Sam Bankman-Fried Years Before FTX Collapsed - Time Virtues for Real-World Utilitarians - by Stefan Schubert & Lucius Caviola, Utilitarianism Deworming - Effective Altruism Forum What we know about Musk's cost-cutting mission - BBC article about DOGE What is your p(doom)? with Darren McKee Longtermism - Wikipedia Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

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 governments, companies, and NGOs, and published 31 books and over 900 papers. It’s an over-used word, but in this case it is justified: Amory is a true thought leader in the global energy transition. Selected follow-ups: Inside Amory's Brain - RMI Get to know us - RMI Books by Amory B. Lovins - Goodreads Reinventing Fire - RMI Integrative Design: A Practice to Tackle Complex Challenges - Stanford d.school What is Integrative Design? - RMI Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

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 directs the Neural Adaptive Computing Laboratory. David had the pleasure of watching Alex give a talk at the AGI 2024 conference in Seattle earlier this year, and found it fascinating. After you hear this episode, we hope you reach a similar conclusion. Selected follow-ups: Alexander Ororbia - Rochester Institute of Technology Alexander G. Ororbia II - Personal website AGI-24: The 17th Annual AGI Conference - AGI Society Joseph Tranquillo - Bucknell University Hopfield network - Wikipedia Karl Friston - UCL Predictive coding - Wikipedia Mortal Computation: A Foundation for Biomimetic Intelligence - Quantitative Biology The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory? - Nature Reviews Neuroscience I Am a Strange Loop (book by Douglas Hofstadter) - Wikipedia Mark Solms - Wikipedia Conscium: Pioneering Safe, Efficient AI The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness (book by Mark Solms) Carver Mead - Wikipedia Event camera (includes Dynamic Vision Sensors) - Wikipedia ICRA (International Conference on Robotics and Automation) Brain-Inspired Machine Intelligence: A Survey of Neurobiologically-Plausible Credit Assignment A Review of Neuroscience-Inspired Machine Learning ngc-learn Taking Neuromorphic Computing to the Next Level with Loihi 2 Technology Brief - Intel Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

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 brain – continues to exist, then you continue to exist. Ariel also claims that brain preservation – the preservation of the connectome, long after we have stopped breathing – is already affordable enough to be provided to essentially everyone. These claims raise all kinds of questions, which are addressed in this conversation. Selected follow-ups: Dr Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston - personal website Book webpage - includes details of when Ariel is speaking in the UK and elsewhere Monash Neuroscience of Consciousness Deep hypothermic circulatory arrest - Wikipedia Sentience and the Origins of Consciousness - article by Karl Friston that mentions bacteria List of advisors to Conscium Does the UK use £15,000, £30,000 or a £70,000 per QALY cost effectiveness threshold? by Jason Shafrin Researchers simulate an entire fly brain on a laptop. Is a human brain next? - US Berkeley News What are memories made of? A survey of neuroscientists on the structural basis of long-term memory - Preprint by Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston, Emil Kendziora, and Andrew McKenzie Related previous episodes: Ep 91: The low-cost future of preserving brains, with Jordan Sparks Ep 77: The case for brain preservation, with Kenneth Hayworth Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

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-distance trucks, and expects to be the first company to deploy fully self-driving trucks in the US when it deploys big driverless trucks (16 tons and more) between Dallas and Houston in April 2025. Self-driving vehicles will be one of the most significant technologies of this decade, and we are delighted that one of the stars of the sector, Sterling, is joining us to share his perspectives. Selected follow-ups: The future of transportation is here - Aurora website Leadership Team - Aurora website Previous episodes also featuring self-driving vehicles: Ep 58: Whatever happened to self-driving cars, with Timothy Lee Ep 26: Peter James, best-selling crime-writer and transhumanist Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

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 and the Race That Will Change the World”. The race is between two remarkable individuals, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Demis Hassabis of DeepMind, who are each profoundly committed to build AI that exceeds human capabilities in all aspects of reasoning. Selected follow-ups: Parmy Olson, Bloomberg Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the new world order - book by Kai-Fu Lee The Coming Wave - book by Mustafa Suleyman Bromance Gone Sour: OpenAI and Microsoft’s Partnership Hits a Rough Patch - Geekflare For our Posterity - essay by Leopold Aschenbrenner OpenAI appoints Retired U.S. Army General Paul M. Nakasone to Board of Directors Do Computers Have Feelings? Don’t Let Google Alone Decide - article by Parmy Olson about Blake Lemoine Conscium - Pioneering Safe, Efficient AI Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

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 envisioned flourishing involves what is called “Transformative AI”. This is no anti-AI campaign, but rather an initiative to “build a robust science and metrology of intelligence, safe-by-design AI engineering, and other foundations for transformative AI under human control”. The initiative has already received lots of feedback, both positive and negative, which we discuss. Selected follow-ups: A Narrow Path - main website ControlAI Conjecture - Redefining AI Safety What is Agentic AI - Interface.AI Chat GPT’s new O1 model escaped its environment to complete “impossible” hacking task - by Mihai Andrei Biological Weapons Convention - United Nations Poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal - Wikipedia (use of Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury, UK) Gathering of AI Safety Institutes in November in San Francisco Conscium - Pioneering safe, efficient AI The UK's APPG (All Party Parliamentary Group) on AI Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

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 currently advising 80 of the largest global businesses on the safe deployment of AI. One of the initiatives David has led is the development and launch of ContractMatrix, in partnership with Microsoft and Harvey, an OpenAI-backed, GPT-4-based large language model that has been fine-tuned for the legal industry. ContractMatrix is a contract drafting and negotiation tool powered by generative AI. It was tested and honed by 1,000 of the firm’s lawyers prior to launch, to mitigate against risks like hallucinations. The firm estimates that the tool is saving up to seven hours from the average contract review, which is around a 30% efficiency gain. As well as internal use by 2,000 of its lawyers, it is also licensed to clients. This is the third time we have looked at the legal industry on the podcast. While lawyers no longer use quill pens, they are not exactly famous for their information technology skills, either. But the legal profession has a couple of characteristics which make it eminently suited to the deployment of advanced AI systems: it generates vast amounts of data and money, and lawyers frequently engage in text-based routine tasks which can be automated by generative AI systems. Previous London Futurists Podcast episodes on the legal industry: Ep 53: The Legal Singularity, with Benjamin Alarie Ep 47: AI transforming professional services, with Shamus Rae Other selected follow-ups: David Wakeling A&O Shearman ContractMatrix Harvey AI RAG - Retrieval-Augmented Generation Digital Operational Resilience Act (impacts banking) The Productivity J-Curve (PDF), by Erik Brynjolfsson, Daniel Rock, Chad Syverson Agentic AI: The Next Big Breakthrough That's Transforming Business And Technology, by Bernard Marr Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

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 University of Wyoming Guided Civic Revival - Substack of Matt Burgess How polarization will destroy itself Roger A. Pielke Jr. - Wikipedia ‘My Life as a Climate Lukewarmer’ - National Review Shared Socioeconomic Pathways - Wikipedia (includes climate scenario SSP5-8.5) Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points - Science Fat-Tailed Uncertainty in the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change (PDF) - explains "The Dismal Theorem" Sri Lanka’s organic farming disaster, explained - Vox Solar panel prices have fallen by around 20% every time global capacity doubled - Our World in Data Special guest speech by Mark Carney - YouTube Younger Dryas - Wikipedia (prehistoric period with rapid climate change) Platform policies of Jill Stein, US Green Party leader Agrowth – should we better be agnostic about growth? - degrowth ‘4°C of global warming is optimal’ – even Nobel Prize winners are getting things catastrophically wrong - The Conversation Economists' Statement on Carbon Dividends Who Is Favored To Win The 2024 Presidential Election? - Nate Silver Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

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 at scale. He has a BSE in Computer Science from Princeton, and a PhD in Computer Science and AI from Stanford. Previous London Futurists Podcast episodes mentioned in this conversation: Ep 74: The Longevity Singularity, with Daniel Ives Ep 45: Generative AI drug discovery breakthrough, with Alex Zhavoronkov Ep 12: Pioneering AI drug development, with Alex Zhavoronkov Other selected follow-ups: AgingBiotech.Info Lifespan.io rejuvenation roadmap AgingDB list Stealth Biotherapeutics NewLimit Juvenity Juvena Therapeutics Immunis Partnership between Calico and AbbVie Hevolution Unity Biotechnology Here's Why resTORbio Fell Over 83% Today A4LI Responds to NIH Reform Proposal Great Desire for Extended Life and Health amongst the American Public - a paper by Karl Pfleger. Kristen Fortney, Joe Betts-LaCroix and others, LEV achieved for young people before it is achieved for old people Longevity Biotech Fellowship Foresight Institute Longevity Global Vitalism.IO Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

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 researchers, and argues that progress towards human-level general intelligence requires a unification of their approaches. More recently, Pedro has become a trenchant critic of what he sees as exaggerated claims about the power and potential of today’s AI, and of calls to impose constraints on it. He has just published “2040: A Silicon Valley Satire”, a novel which ridicules Big Tech and also American politics. Selected follow-ups: Pedro Domingos - University of Washington Previous London Futurists Podcast episode featuring Pedro Domingos 2040: A Silicon Valley Satire The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World The Bonfire of the Vanities Ron Howard Mike Judge Martin Scorsese Pandora’s Brain Transcendence Future of Life Institute moratorium open letter OpenAI working on new reasoning technology under code name ‘Strawberry’ Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach - by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig Google's AI reasons its way around the London Underground - Nature Conscium Is LaMDA Sentient? — an Interview - by Blake Lemoine Could a Large Language Model be Conscious? - Talk by David Chalmers at NeurIPS 2022 Jeremy Bentham The Extended Phenotype - 1982 book by Richard Dawkins Clarion West: Workshops for people who are serious about writing Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

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 that Britain is run by bluffers, “The System: Who Owns the Internet, and How It Owns Us”, and, most recently, “The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World”. That all adds up to enough content to fill at least four of our episodes, but we mainly focus on the ideas in the last of these books, about digital pandemics. Selected follow-ups: James Ball (personal website) The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World - book by James Ball Guardian and Washington Post win Pulitzer prize for NSA revelations Meme - as described by Richard Dawkins Dreyfus affair Blood libel Future Shock - book by Alvin and Heidi Toffler How The Gulf Of Tonkin Incident Sparked The Vietnam War Why Narcissists Love Conspiracy Theories Nigel Farage - UK politician WarGames - 1983 movie Gish gallop - rhetorical technique Dominic Cummings has admitted the Leave campaign won by lying Reality check: how do Farage’s claims on immigration, economy and crime hold up? Facts don’t change minds – and there’s data to prove it Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

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 director at MTV and a senior vice president at Sony Pictures. He now consults to CEOs about digital transformation. David and Calum had the pleasure of joining them on their podcast recently, where the conversation delved into the likely future impacts of artificial intelligence and other technologies, and also included politics. This return conversation covers a wide range of themes, including the dangers of Q-day, the prospects for technological unemployment, the future of media, different approaches to industrial strategy, a plea to "bring on the machines", and the importance of "thinking more athletically about the future". Selected follow-ups: The Futurists Brett King Robert Tercek Episode of The Futurists featuring David and Calum Neptune's Brood - Wikipedia article on the novel by Charles Stross Jobs lost, jobs gained: What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages - McKinsey Global Institute Wirecutter - New York Times product review site Could AI create a one-person unicorn? Sam Altman thinks so - Fortune The book The Rise of Technosocialism Professor Richard Petty Comparison of economic growth, Europe vs. USA - Centre for European Reform LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman wants Kamala Harris, if elected, to replace Lina Khan as head of the Federal Trade Commission - MSNBC Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

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 recent episodes, in which we have interviewed Kenneth Hayworth, Max More, and Emil Kendziorra. Most people whose brains have been preserved for future restoration have undergone cryopreservation, which involves cooling the brain (and sometimes the whole body) down to a very low temperature and keeping it that way. OBP does offer that service occasionally, but its focus – which may be unique – is chemical fixation of the brain. Previous episodes on biostasis and brain preservation: The case for brain preservation, with Kenneth Hayworth Cryonics, cryocrastination, and the future: changing minds, with Max More Stop cryocrastinating! with Emil Kendziorra Additional selected follow-ups: Oregon Brain Preservation The costs of the services provided by Oregon Brain Preservation Focused Ultrasound: A Promising Tool for Cryonics - Tomorrow Bio Investigation of Electromagnetic Resonance Rewarming Enhanced by Magnetic Nanoparticles for Cryopreservation - Langmuir Pre-epithelialized cryopreserved tracheal allograft for neo-trachea flap engineering - Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology Aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation by Robert McIntyre and Gregory Fahy - Cryobiology Oregon's Death with Dignity Act 14-year-old girl who died of cancer wins right to be cryogenically frozen - The Guardian Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

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 is currently COO of Trivandi and also has a focus on helping women to have more power in a future dominated by technology. Calum met Holly at a conference in Dubai this year, where she quizzed him on-stage about machine consciousness. Selected follow-ups: Women for Tech UAE Trivandi appoints Holly Joint Trivandi - "Creating Events and Venues, Better" With a Few Bits of Data, Researchers Identify ‘Anonymous’ People - New York Times The Age of Surveillance Capitalism - Shoshana Zuboff Rankings out of 142 cities - Smart City Observatory (Abu Dhabi ranked #10 in 2024) Women in Tech: Time to close the gender gap - A PwC research report Why are so many big tech whistleblowers women? - The Conversation Falcon - the Arabic language LLM Collapse of Silicon Valley Bank - Wikipedia Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

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 at the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technology, and a senior advisor to The Hastings Center. Earlier in his life, Wendell was founder and president of two computer consulting companies, Farpoint Solutions and Omnia Consulting Inc. Selected follow-ups: Wendell Wallach Personal Website Wendell Wallach - Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs The Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative Nobel Peace Prize Lecture by Christian Lous Lange (1921) Thomas Midgley Jr. - Wikipedia Montreal Protocol - Wikipedia Robot Dog Highlighted at China-Cambodia Joint Military Exercise (video) For Our Posterity - essay by Leopold Aschenbrenner Campaign by Control/AI against deepfakes Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

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 companies, most recently as a Founder and CEO of Medlanes and onFeedback, which were sold, respectively, to Zava and QuestionPro. Emil then decided to dedicate the next decades of his life, he says, to advancing medical biostasis and cryomedicine. He is currently the CEO of Tomorrow Bio and the President of the Board at the European Biostasis Foundation. A special offer: Thanks to Tomorrow Bio, an offer has been created, exclusively for listeners to the London Futurists Podcast who decide to become members of Tomorrow Bio after listening to this episode. When signing up online, use the code mentioned toward the end of the episode to reduce the cost of monthly or annual subscriptions by 30%. Small print: This offer doesn’t apply to lifetime subscriptions, and is only available to new members of Tomorrow Bio. Importantly, this offer will expire on 15 September 2024, so don’t delay if you want to take advantage of it. Selected follow-ups: tomorrow.bio European Biostasis Foundation Dignitas The case for brain preservation - Our episode featuring Kenneth Hayworth Cryonics, cryocrastination, and the future: changing minds - Our episode featuring Max More My next 20+ years towards a moonshot - Blogpost written by Emil Kendziorra in May 2020 The Cryosphere - A Discord server for discussion of anything cryonics related Global Cryonics Summit - Miami, Florida, 20 & 21 July 2024 Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration