London Futurists
Anticipating and managing exponential impact - hosts David Wood and Calum Chace
Calum Chace is a sought-after keynote speaker and best-selling writer on artificial intelligence. He focuses on the medium- and long-term impact of AI on all of us, our societies and our economies. He advises companies and governments on AI policy.
His non-fiction books on AI are Surviving AI, about superintelligence, and The Economic Singularity, about the future of jobs. Both are now in their third editions.
He also wrote Pandora's Brain and Pandora’s Oracle, a pair of techno-thrillers about the first superintelligence. He is a regular contributor to magazines, newspapers, and radio.
In the last decade, Calum has given over 150 talks in 20 countries on six continents. Videos of his talks, and lots of other materials are available at https://calumchace.com/.
He is co-founder of a think tank focused on the future of jobs, called the Economic Singularity Foundation. The Foundation has published Stories from 2045, a collection of short stories written by its members.
Before becoming a full-time writer and speaker, Calum had a 30-year career in journalism and in business, as a marketer, a strategy consultant and a CEO. He studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford University, which confirmed his suspicion that science fiction is actually philosophy in fancy dress.
David Wood is Chair of London Futurists, and is the author or lead editor of twelve books about the future, including The Singularity Principles, Vital Foresight, The Abolition of Aging, Smartphones and Beyond, and Sustainable Superabundance.
He is also principal of the independent futurist consultancy and publisher Delta Wisdom, executive director of the Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV) Foundation, Foresight Advisor at SingularityNET, and a board director at the IEET (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies). He regularly gives keynote talks around the world on how to prepare for radical disruption. See https://deltawisdom.com/.
As a pioneer of the mobile computing and smartphone industry, he co-founded Symbian in 1998. By 2012, software written by his teams had been included as the operating system on 500 million smartphones.
From 2010 to 2013, he was Technology Planning Lead (CTO) of Accenture Mobility, where he also co-led Accenture’s Mobility Health business initiative.
Has an MA in Mathematics from Cambridge, where he also undertook doctoral research in the Philosophy of Science, and a DSc from the University of Westminster.
London Futurists
Overcoming limitations, with Natasha Vita-More
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 reflect on her work in building the movement—from practice-based approaches, scientific contributions, and theoretical innovations.
Areas we explore include: How has Natasha's work seeded the global growth of transhumanism? What are the main advances over the years that she particularly values? And what are the disappointments?
We also look to the future: What are her hopes and expectations for the next ten years of transhumanism?
Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration
Selected follow-up reading:
https://natashavita-more.com/
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2004/02/vital-progress-summit/
http://www.extropy.org/proactionaryprinciple.htm
https://metanexus.net/transhumanism-and-its-critics/
https://whatistranshumanism.org/
https://www.alcor.org/library/persistence-of-long-term-memory-in-vitrified-and-revived-simple-animals/
https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html
F. M. Esfandiary: https://archives.nypl.org/mss/4846
https://www.maxmore.com/
The World’s Most Dangerous Idea? https://nickbostrom.com/papers/dangerous
https://theconversation.com/the-end-of-history-francis-fukuyamas-controversial-idea-explained-193225
https://www.humanityplus.org/
https://transhumanist-studies.teachable.com/
Anyone Can Code, Ethiopia: https://icogacc.com/
https://afrolongevity.taffds.org/
Agency in Amsterdam dives into topics like Tech, AI, digital marketing, and more drama...
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