London Futurists

Ben Goertzel is a cognitive scientist and artificial intelligence researcher. He is CEO and founder of SingularityNET, leader of the OpenCog Foundation, and chair of Humanity+. Ben is perhaps best-known for popularising the term 'artificial general intelligence', or AGI, a machine with all the cognitive abilities of an adult human. He thinks that the way to create this machine is to star...

At a time when many people find it depressingly easy to see how "bad futures" could arise, what is a credible narrative of a "good future"? That question is of central concern to our guest in this episode, Gerd Leonhard. Gerd is one of the most successful futurists on the international speaker circuit. He estimates that he has spoken to a combined audience of 2.5 million people...

Our guest in this episode is Francesca Rossi. Francesca studied computer science at the University of Pisa in Italy, where she became a professor, before spending 20 years at the University of Padova. In 2015 she joined IBM's T.J. Watson Research Lab in New York, where she is now an IBM Fellow and also IBM's AI Ethics Global Leader. Francesca is a member of numerous international bodies...

In this episode, Tim Clement-Jones brings us up to date on the reactions by members of the UK's House of Commons to recent advances in the capabilities of AI systems, such as ChatGPT. He also looks ahead to larger changes, in the UK and elsewhere. Lord Clement-Jones CBE, or Tim, as he prefers to be known, has been a very successful lawyer, holding senior positions at ITV and Kingfisher among...

Advanced AI is currently pretty much a duopoly between the USA and China. The US is the clear leader, thanks largely to its tech giants – Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple. China also has a fistful of tech giants – Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent are the ones usually listed, but the Chinese government has also taken a strong interest in AI since Deep Mind’s Alpha Go system beat the world’s be...

Peter James is one of the world’s most successful crime writers. His "Roy Grace" series, about a detective in Brighton, England, near where Peter lives, has produced a remarkable 19 consecutive Sunday Times Number One bestsellers. His legions of devoted fans await each new release eagerly. The books have been televised, with the third series of "Grace", starting John Simm, bein...

Our guest in this episode is a Briton who is based in Berlin, namely Andrew Steele. Earlier in his life Andrew spent nine years at the University of Oxford where, among other accomplishments, he gained a PhD in physics. His focus switched to computational biology, and he held positions at Cancer Research UK and the Francis Crick Institute. Along the way, Andrew decided that aging was the single mo...

It is nearly 40 years since our guest in this episode, pioneering transhumanist Natasha Vita-More, created the first version of the Transhumanist Manifesto. Since that time, Natasha has established numerous core perspectives, values, and actions in the global transhumanist family. Natasha joins us in this episode to share her observations on how transhumanism has evolved over the decades, and to r...

Our guest in this episode is the scientist and science fiction author Davin Brin, whose writings have won the Hugo, Locus, Campbell, and Nebula Awards. His style is sometimes called 'hard science fiction'. This means his narratives feature scientific or technological change that is plausible rather than purely magical. The scenarios he creates are thought-provoking as well as entertainin...

OpenAI's ChatGPT and picture generating AI systems like MidJourney and Stable Diffusion have got a lot more people interested in advanced AI and talking about it. Which is a good thing. It will not be pretty if the transformative changes that will happen in the next two or three decades take most of us by surprise. A company that has been pioneering advanced AI for longer than most is IBM, an...

Quantum computing is a tough subject to explain and discuss. As Niels Bohr put it, “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it”. Richard Feynman helpfully added, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”. Quantum computing employs the weird properties of quantum mechanics like superposition and entanglement. Classical computing uses binary digits,...

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 bi...

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 usu...

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...

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...

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 t...

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 d...

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...

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...

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 hypoth...

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...

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 b...

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...

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...

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....