In the summer of 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi and some colleagues at the Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico were walking to lunch, and casually discussing flying saucers, when Fermi blurted out “But where is everybody?” He was not the first to pose the question, and the precise phrasing is disputed, but the mystery he was referring to remains compelling. We appear to live in a vast universe, with billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars, mostly surrounded by planets, including many like t...
Jan 04, 2023•37 min•Season 1Ep. 20
An area of technology that has long been anticipated is Extended Reality (XR), which includes Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR). For many decades, researchers have developed various experimental headsets, glasses, gloves, and even immersive suits, to give wearers of these devices the impression of existing within a reality that is broader than what our senses usually perceive. More recently, a number of actual devices have come to the market, with, let's s...
Dec 28, 2022•32 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Our guest on this episode is someone with excellent connections to the foresight departments of governments around the world. He is Jerome Glenn, Founder and Executive Director of the Millennium Project. The Millennium Project is a global participatory think tank established in 1996, which now has over 70 nodes around the world. It has the stated purpose to "Improve humanity's prospects for building a better world". The organisation produces regular "State of the Future"...
Dec 21, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 18
This episode features the CEO of Brainnwave, Steven Coates, who is a pioneer in the field of Decision Intelligence. Decision Intelligence is the use of AI to enhance the ability of companies, organisations, or individuals to make key decisions - decisions about which new business opportunities to pursue, about evidence of possible leakage or waste, about the allocation of personnel to tasks, about geographical areas to target, and so on. What these decisions have in common is that they can all b...
Dec 14, 2022•30 min•Season 1Ep. 17
As AI automates larger portions of the activities of companies and organisations, there's a greater need to think carefully about questions of privacy, bias, transparency, and explainability. Due to scale effects, mistakes made by AI and the automated analysis of data can have wide impacts. On the other hand, evidence of effective governance of AI development can deepen trust and accelerate the adoption of significant innovations. One person who has thought a great deal about these issues i...
Dec 07, 2022•32 min•Season 1Ep. 16
One area of technology that is frequently in the news these days is rejuvenation biotechnology, namely the possibility of undoing key aspects of biological aging via a suite of medical interventions. What these interventions target isn't individual diseases, such as cancer, stroke, or heart disease, but rather the common aggravating factors that lie behind the increasing prevalence of these diseases as we become older. Our guest in this episode is someone who has been at the forefront for o...
Nov 30, 2022•31 min•Season 1Ep. 15
A Venn diagram of people interested in how AI will shape our future, and members of the effective altruism community (often abbreviated to EA), would show a lot of overlap. One of the rising stars in this overlap is our guest in this episode, the polymath Jacy Reese Anthis. Our discussion picks up themes from Jacy's 2018 book “The End of Animal Farming”, including an optimistic roadmap toward an animal-free food system, as well as factors that could alter that roadmap. We also hear about th...
Nov 23, 2022•33 min•Season 1Ep. 14
In the 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher Plato theorised that humans do not perceive the world as it really is. All we can see is shadows on a wall. In 2003, the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom published a paper which formalised an argument to prove Plato was right. The paper argued that one of the following three statements is true: 1. We will go extinct fairly soon 2. Advanced civilisations don’t produce simulations containing entities which think they are naturally-occurring sentient int...
Nov 16, 2022•30 min•Season 1Ep. 13
This episode discusses progress at Insilico Medicine, the AI drug development company founded by our guest, longevity pioneer Alex Zhavoronkov. 1.20 In Feb 2022, Insilico got an IPF drug into phase 1 clinical trials: a first for a wholly AI-developed drug 1.50 Insilico is now well-funded; its software is widely used in the pharma industry 2.30 How drug development works. First you create a hypothesis about what causes a disease 4.00 Pandaomics is Insilico’s software to generate hypotheses. It co...
Nov 09, 2022•39 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Co-hosts Calum and David dig deep into aspects of David's recent new book "The Singularity Principles". Calum (CC) says he is, in part, unconvinced. David (DW) agrees that the projects he recommends are hard, but suggests some practical ways forward. 0.25 The technological singularity may be nearer than we think 1.10 Confusions about the singularity 1.35 “Taking back control of the singularity” 2.40 The “Singularity Shadow”: over-confident predictions which repulse people 3.30 The...
Nov 02, 2022•31 min•Season 1Ep. 11
How likely is it that, by 2030, someone will build artificial general intelligence (AGI)? Ross Nordby is an AI researcher who has shortened his AGI timelines: he has changed his mind about when AGI might be expected to exist. He recently published an article on the LessWrong community discussion site, giving his argument in favour of shortening these timelines. He now identifies 2030 as the date by which it is 50% likely that AGI will exist. In this episode, we ask Ross questions about his argum...
Oct 26, 2022•36 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Why do human brains consume much less power than artificial neural networks? Simon Thorpe, Research Director of CNRS, explains his view that the key to artificial general intelligence is a "terabrain" that copies from human brains the sparse-firing networks with spiking neurons. 00.11 Recapping "the AI paradox" 00.28 The nervousness of CTOs regarding AI 00.43 Introducing Simon 01.43 45 years since Oxford, working out how the brain does amazing things 02.45 Brain visual percep...
Oct 19, 2022•33 min•Season 1Ep. 9
This episode features Daniel Hulme, founder of Satalia and chief AI officer at WPP. What is AI good at today? And how can organisations increase the likelihood of deploying AI successfully? 02.55 What is AI good at today? 03.25 Deep learning isn’t yet being widely used in companies. Executives are wary of self-adapting systems 04.15 Six categories of AI deployment today 04.20 1. Automation. Using “if … then …” statements 04.50 2. Generative AI, like Dall-E 05.15 3. Humanisation, like DeepFake te...
Oct 12, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Calum and David reflect on their involvement in two recent conferences, one in Riyadh, and one in Dublin. Each conference highlighted a potential disruption in a major industry: a country with large ambitions in the AI space, and a new foundation in the longevity space. 00.00 A tale of two cities, two conferences, two industries 00.44 First, the 2nd Saudi Global AI Conference 01.03 Vision 2030 01.11 Saudi has always been a coalition between the fundamentalist Wahhabis and the Royal Family 01.38 ...
Oct 05, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 7
This episode continues our discussion with AI researcher Aleksa Gordić from DeepMind on understanding today’s most advanced AI systems. 00.07 This episode builds on Episode 5 01.05 We start with GANs – Generative Adversarial Networks 01.33 Solving the problem of stability, with higher resolution 03.24 GANs are notoriously hard to train. They suffer from mode collapse 03.45 Worse, the model might not learn anything, and the result is pure noise 03.55 DC GANs introduced convolutional layers to sta...
Sep 28, 2022•32 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Welcome to episode 5 of the London Futurist podcast, with your co-hosts David Wood and Calum Chace. We’re attempting something rather ambitious in episodes 5 and 6. We try to explain how today’s cutting edge artificial intelligence systems work, using language familiar to lay people, rather than people with maths or computer science degrees. Understanding how Transformers and Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) work means getting to grips with concepts like matrix transformations, vectors, an...
Sep 22, 2022•29 min•Season 1Ep. 5
In this episode, co-hosts Calum Chace and David Wood explore a number of recent developments in AI - developments that are rapidly changing what counts as "state of the art" in AI. 00.05: Short recap of previous episodes 00.20: A couple of Geoff Hinton stories 02.27: Today's subject: the state of AI today 02.53: Search 03.35: Games 03.58: Translation 04.33: Maps 05.33: Making the world understandable. Increasingly 07.00: Transformers. Attention is all you need 08.00: Masked langua...
Sep 19, 2022•33 min•Season 1Ep. 4
In this episode, co-hosts Calum Chace and David Wood continue their review of progress in AI, taking up the story at the 2012 "Big Bang". 00.05: Introduction: exponential impact, big bangs, jolts, and jerks 00.45: What enabled the Big Bang 01.25: Moore's Law 02.05: Moore's Law has always evolved since its inception in 1965 03.08: Intel's tick tock becomes tic tac toe 03.49: GPUs - Graphic Processing Units 04.29: TPUs - Tensor Processing Units 04.46: Moore's Law is n...
Sep 07, 2022•32 min•Season 1Ep. 3
AI is a subject that we will all benefit from understanding better. In this episode, co-hosts Calum Chace and David Wood review progress in AI from the Greeks to the 2012 "Big Bang". 00.05: A prediction 01.09: AI is likely to cause two singularities in this pivotal century - a jobless economy, and superintelligence 02.22: Counterpoint: it may require AGI to displace most people from the workforce. So only one singularity? 03.27: Jobs are nowhere near all that matters in humans 04.11: A...
Aug 08, 2022•32 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Co-hosts David Wood and Calum Chace share their vision and plans for the London Futurists podcast. 00.20: Why we are launching this podcast. Anticipating and managing exponential impact 02.45: It’s not the Fourth Industrial Revolution – it’s the Information Revolution 04.58: AI’s impact. Smartphones as an example of technology’s power 09.04: The obviousness of change in hindsight. Why technology implementation is often slow 11.30: Technology implementation is often delayed by poor planning 15:20...
Aug 02, 2022•31 min•Season 1Ep. 1
