Singularity.FM

Debora Spar is a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and Senior Associate Dean of Harvard Business School Online. Her research focuses on issues of gender and technology as well as the interplay between technological change and broader social structures. Prof. Spar tackles some of these issues in her recent book Work Mate […]

Melanie Mitchell is the Davis Professor of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, and Professor of Computer Science at Portland State University. Prof. Mitchell is the author of a number of interesting books such as Complexity: A Guided Tour and Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans. One interesting detail of her academic bio is […]

Jenny Kleeman is a journalist who covers award-winning true stories in print, audio, and video. Most recently Kleeman is the author of a meticulously researched and extremely well-written book titled Sex Robots and Vegan Meat: Adventures at the Frontiers of Birth, Food, Sex and Death. Given that birth, food, sex, and death encompass the human […]

Jacinta González is not an angel or venture capitalist. She is not a scientist or a technologist. She doesn’t have a Ph. D. in AI or quantum mechanics. She is not an entrepreneur who founded the next unicorn startup. Yet Jacinta’s decade-long first-hand experience of surveillance, and the system and technology that supports it, is as […]

Last month I did an interview for Johan Steyn. It was a great 45-min-conversation where we covered a variety of topics such as: the definition of the singularity; whether we are making progress towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI); open vs closed systems; the importance of consciousness; my Amazon bestseller Conversations with the Future; how I […]

Renée Cummings is a criminologist, criminal psychologist, and an AI ethicist who, among other things, specializes in best-practice criminal justice interventions and implicit bias. Given the global Black Lives Matter movement and the fact that there have been numerous examples where technological solutions have been proven to exhibit a biased or even racist predisposition, I […]

Ada Palmer is a Professor in History researching the history of science, religion, progress, culture, and many other fascinating topics. She is also a science fiction author of the award-winning Terra Ignota series beginning with Too Like the Lightning, which explores a twenty-fifth civilization of voluntary citizenship and borderless nations. Now, this interview is over […]

Prof. Aaron Benanav has devoted his life to studying unemployment. Given that automation, technological unemployment, and universal basic income have become hot political and economic issues across the world, it was about time to have a podcast episode exclusively on those topics. I hope you enjoy it and learn as much from Aaron as I […]

Karl Schroeder is not only a great science fiction writer but also a professional futurist who has mastered both the art and science. I invited Schroeder back on my podcast for a brief discussion of foresight in the context of the on-going COVID19 global pandemic. If you have not seen our previous 2 interviews you can […]

A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed by James Bickerton of the Daily Express. We discussed transhumanism, the Singularity, AI, and the threats to democracy, among other things. Here is the description from James Bickerton’s YouTube channel: I interview Nikola Danaylov (@singularityblog), founder of the Singularity Weblog and author of Conversations with the Future: […]

Ada Palmer is a Professor in History researching the history of science, religion, progress, culture and many other fascinating topics. She is also a science fiction author of the award-winning Terra Ignota series beginning with Too Like the Lightning, which explores a twenty-fifth civilization of voluntary citizenship and borderless nations. During this 2h 45 min […]

I have previously interviewed a few fantastic scientists and philosophers but rare are those strange birds who manage to combine together both deep academic training and the living ethos of those separate disciplines. Prof. Massimo Pigliucci is one of those very rare and strange people. He has 3 Ph. D.’s – Genetics, Evolutionary Biology, and Philosophy, […]

People often ask me about my most favorite interview I have ever done. And my usual reply is that interviews are like children, even if we have our favorites it is not wise to express that outwardly because all kinds of problems will follow. And yet, after having published nearly 250 episodes of my podcast, […]

Two days ago I was interviewed by Jon Nielsen of the fantastic Happy Ways Podcast. During this 50 min interview with Jon Nielsen, we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: why the world is not upside down yet and what are the most productive attitudes towards the current COVID-19 crisis; why the journey […]

Dr. Ann Cavoukian was Ontario’s Privacy Commissioner for unprecedented 17 years and held the position during 3 different provincial governments. About 7 years ago, while still in office, I interviewed Ann Cavoukian on her original concept of Privacy by Design. [PbD] So if you haven’t seen it yet it may be best to start by […]

James W. Clement is a longevity researcher who was the 12th person on the planet to have his DNA sequenced. In 2010 James launched his Supercentenarian Research Study, which he started in 2010 with Professor George M. Church of Harvard Medical School. Since then Clement has read 20,000 medical research papers on longevity and has […]

This is the short closing speech I delivered at the 2019 Dark Futures meetup in Toronto. Not my finest speech but, since event organizer and futurist Nikolas Badminton kindly gave me a video of my keynote, I thought it may be good to share it publicly and get your critical feedback. Feel free to post […]

Dr. David Ferrucci is one of the few people who have created a benchmark in the history of AI because when IBM Watson won Jeopardy we reached a milestone many thought impossible. I was very privileged to have Ferrucci on my podcast in early 2012 when we spent an hour on Watson’s intricacies and importance. […]

Katy Cook‘s recent book the Psychology of Silicon Valley: Ethical Threats and Emotional Unintelligence in the Tech Industry is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the conflicting motivations, mythologies, identities and inherent tensions within Silicon Valley. It offers a unique understanding as per why we have seen the magic, manic and monstrous trajectory of […]

Cathy O’Neil is a math Ph. D. from Harvard and a data-scientist who hopes to someday have a better answer to the question, “what can a non-academic mathematician do that makes the world a better place?” In the meantime, she wrote a seminal book titled Weapons of Math Destruction: how big data increases inequality and […]

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the smartest species of them all?” “You, oh Homo Sapiens, are smart, it is true. But AI will be smarter even than you.” *** The most popular myth about technology is perhaps the myth that technology is a crystal ball. A crystal ball because it allegedly allows us to […]

It’s been 7 years since my first interview with Gary Marcus and I felt it’s time to catch up. Gary is the youngest Professor Emeritus at NYU and I wanted to get his contrarian views on the major things that have happened in AI as well as those that haven’t happened. Prof. Marcus is an […]

Prof. Steve Fuller is the author of 25 books including a trilogy relating to the idea of a ‘post-’ or ‘trans-‘ human future, and most recently, Nietzschean Meditations: Untimely Thoughts at the Dawn of the Transhuman Age. He has an incredibly broad amount of knowledge from a diversity of disciplines and I have to admit […]

Cory Doctorow is probably my all time most favorite science fiction writer. The reason for that is simple – Doctorow is not only a great story-teller but also an activist. To paraphrase Karl Marx, writers have tried to capture and describe the world but the point, however, is to change it. And Cory is a […]

Tristan Harris is one of my heroes. And I don’t know about you but I am much more demanding and harder on my heroes. I just expect them to hold themselves to a higher standard, to know more, to do more, to be more and, perhaps most of all, to live and breathe their own […]