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
ChatGPT has woken up the House of Commons, with Tim Clement-Jones
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 others, and later becoming London Managing Partner of law firm DLA Piper.
He is better known as a politician. He became a life peer in 1998, and has been the Liberal Democrats’ spokesman on a wide range of issues. The reason we are delighted to have him as a guest on the podcast is that he was the chair of the AI Select Committee, Co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on AI, and is now a member of a special inquiry on the use of AI in Weapons Systems.
Tim also has multiple connections with universities and charities in the UK.
Selected follow-up reading:
https://www.lordclementjones.org/
https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/APPG/artificial-intelligence
https://arcs.qmul.ac.uk/governance/council/council-membership/timclement-jones.html
Topics in this conversation include:
*) Does "the Westminster bubble" understand the importance of AI?
*) Evidence that "the tide is turning" - MPs are demonstrating a spirit of inquiry
*) The example of Sir Peter Bottomley, the Father of the House (who has been an MP continuously since 1975)
*) New AI systems are showing characteristics that had not been expected to arrive for another 5 or 10 years, taking even AI experts by surprise
*) The AI duopoly (the US and China) and the possible influence of the UK and the EU
*) The forthcoming EU AI Act and the risk-based approach it embodies
*) The importance of regulatory systems being innovation-friendly
*) How might the EU support the development of some European AI tech giants?
*) The inevitability(?) of the UK needing to become "a rule taker"
*) Cynical and uncynical explanations for why major tech companies support EU AI regulation
*) The example of AI-powered facial recognition: benefits and risks
*) Is Brexit helping or hindering the UK's AI activities?
*) Complications with the funding of AI research in the UK's universities
*) The risks of a slow-down in the UK's AI start-up ecosystem
*) Looking further afield: AI ambitions in the UAE and Saudi Arabia
*) The particular risks of lethal autonomous weapons systems
*) Future conflicts between AI-controlled tanks and human-controlled tanks
*) Forecasts for the arrival of artificial general intelligence: 10-15 years from now?
*) Superintelligence may emerge from a combination of separate AI systems
*) The case for "technology-neutral" regulation
Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration
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