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
Peter James, best-selling crime-writer and transhumanist
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, being commissioned for next year.
Peter has worked in other genres too, having written 36 novels altogether. When Calum first met Peter in the mid-1990s, Peter's science fiction novel “Host” was generating rave reviews. It was the world’s first electronically published novel, and a copy of its floppy disc version is on display in London’s Science Museum.
Peter is also a self-confessed petrol-head, with an enviable collection of classic cars, and a pretty successful track record of racing some of them. The discussion later in the episode addresses the likely arrival of self-driving cars. But we start with the possibility of mind uploading, which is the subject of “Host”.
Selected follow-up reading:
https://www.peterjames.com/
https://www.alcor.org/
Topics in this conversation include:
*) Peter's passion for the future
*) The transformative effect of the 1990 book "Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition"
*) A Christmas sojourn at MIT and encounters with AI pioneer Marvin Minsky
*) The origins of the ideas behind "Host"
*) Meeting Alcor, the cryonics organisation, in Riverside California
*) How cryonics has evolved over the decades
*) "The first person to live to 200 has already been born"
*) Quick summaries of previous London Futurists Podcast episodes featuring Aubrey de Grey and Andrew Steele
*) The case for doing better than nature
*) Peter's novel "Perfect People" and the theme of "designer babies"
*) Possible improvements in the human condition from genetic editing
*) The risk of a future "genetic underclass"
*) Technology divides often don't last: consider the "fridge divide" and the "smartphone divide"
*) Calum's novel "Pandora's Brain"
*) Why Peter is comfortable with the label "transhumanist"
*) Various ways of reading (many) more books
*) A thought experiment involving a healthy 99 year old
*) If people lived a lot longer, we might take better care of our planet
*) Peter's views on technology assisting writers
*) Strengths and weaknesses of present-day ChatGPT as a writer
*) Prospects for transhumans to explore space
*) The "bunker experiments" into the circadian cycle, which suggest that humans naturally revert to a daily cycle closer to 26 hours than 24 hours
*) Possible answers to Fermi's question about lack of any sign of alien civilisations
*) Reflections on "The Pale Blue Dot of Earth" (originally by Carl Sagan)
*) The likelihood of incredible surprises in the next few decades
*) Pros and cons of humans driving on public roads (especially when drivers are using mobile phones)
*) Legal and ethical issues arising from autonomous cars
*) Exponential change often involves a frustrating slow phase before fast breakthroughs
*) Anticipating the experience of driving inside immersive virtual reality
*) The tragic background to Peter's book "Possession"
*) A concluding message from the science fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut
Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration
